


Darling, so it goes

by TheTruthAboutLove



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Future, F/F, Post-HYDRA Reveal, Post-War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-22
Updated: 2019-08-17
Packaged: 2020-05-16 15:22:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 31,553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19320850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheTruthAboutLove/pseuds/TheTruthAboutLove
Summary: In 2055, after HYDRA has taken over, but Fury is organizing a resistance cell in Chicago, he runs into a young Maria Hill and takes her in, having no idea of her full potential. In NYC, Tony Stark is covertly leading the rebellion in another, larger-scale fashion, with the help of Natasha Romanoff.





	1. wise men say only fools rush in

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't posted anything BlackHill in a while and despite the first chapter being just Maria-centric this qualifies. This story has been sitting in my WIPs for a while, I feel like it could be better than it is, but this is what I managed to do with the concept I had: futuristic world where HYDRA has taken over and our usual heroes are the resistance.
> 
> TW: child abuse.  
> TW: non-graphic sex scenes.

When she's thirteen years old, she runs away from home.

Her father is passed out on the couch and she's done with middle school, come autumn she'll have to start high school and she won't know how to explain the bruises. And since her grandma passed, a couple months before, things have gotten worse and worse. She doesn't take much, she puts some of her favorite clothes in a backpack and runs until her feet hurt. Then she keeps running.

She hides in the east end of town, she's heard things are quieter there and people are too caught up with their own stuff to care if there's a kid sleeping on a bench in their park. She knows the winter is going to carry trouble, but this is the only life she can lead.

It's after three weeks of stolen meals and public water when two men walk up to her. The older one is wearing a black leather coat that stops shortly above his knee. Maria thinks they're gonna hurt her at first, she's been out of trouble all that time so it seems fair trouble has finally found her.

“So you're the kid who's been sneaking around my side of city, stealing food,” the man says and crouches down. He's wearing a black patch over one of his eyes and has a watch around his wrist that Maria is almost certain he shouldn't be able to afford.

Her back is to the alley wall and she gets up from the ground but doesn't push away from the bricks behind her. She nods.

“How'd you end up here?”

She doesn't say a word.

“Are your parents dead? You better answer me kid, I’m not known for my patience.”

She looks at him as he stands again, then at the skinny man behind him. The white boy is young, in his twenties probably. The black man with the leather coat is at least forty.

“My mom’s dead.”

“Your father?”

Maria shrugs. He can see her bruises, she's sure.

“He hurt you?”

She hesitates, then nods.

“Alright kid. What’s your name?”

“Maria.”

“Maria, that’s a beautiful name. I’m Nick,” he says and offers his hand.

She takes it, because really, what choice does she have? The man says it's his side of the city and Maria doesn't doubt it for a second; she gets in the car and doesn’t look back. Not that she really has anything to look back to.

  
  


Nick gives her a room of her own, and tells her he's going to buy her clothes and shoes and “a damn comb”, in his own words, because Maria’s hair is messy and getting long. Maria has never had a room of her own before, but not even that is an offer good enough to put her in a dress. She goes to the shop and picks a t-shirt that's too big and jeans that fall down too large on her shoes.

“You look like you belong in a movie from the last century,” Nick tells her. “Is there nothing in this damn shop made after the 2050's?”

“I like these. The hoodie, too,” Maria points at the dark blue hoodie that she chose but Nick asked her not to try on.

“You're a stubborn kid.”

“I know.”

Nick stares at her and for a second Maria thinks he's just gonna turn around and leave her ungrateful little self in the store without ever looking back.

“Pick a few other t-shirts, I'll chose the jeans. For real, kid, this is 2055, not 1985. No bell jeans.”

“Can I have the hoodie?”

The man sighs and bring his hands to his hips, his black coat shifting back slightly with the motion and looks at Maria again.

“Fine. Now get busy, pick a handful. Don't be too picky, choose a few, 'cause I'm not washing your damn shirts every three days.”

“Whatever,” Maria huffs and runs off to the other side of the store.

She comes back five minutes later with a handful of shirts and sees the regret in Nick's eyes for telling her not to be picky.

That night, she gets her hands on a pair of scissors and cuts her hair as short as she wants them to be. For no other reason other than her father can't forbid her to anymore.

  
  


She starts hanging around the bar. It says The Shield on the sign outside, but everyone just calls it “Fury's”. She knows it's not just a bar, but she's not sure she wants to know what happens around the place.

There are a few other kids in the neighborhood and Maria becomes friends with three of them. Sam, Steve and James. Nick scoffs at her and mutters that of damn course she's gonna be best buddies with two of the skinniest kid in town, because she can never make it easier on him.

She's been with him for about three months and they're having dinner when she looks up at him and asks him why he took her in.

He puts down his fork and stares at her again with that look that makes Maria think he's gonna get rid of her by morning.

“I'm not trying to sound ungrateful. I know you didn't have to, and I'm very grateful. But that's just it, you didn't _have_ to. Why did you?”

“You were starving and I got too much food.”

Maria keeps looking at him as he eats, until he puts his fork down again.

“Listen very carefully, 'cause I'm never gonna say this again,” he warns her. “I took you in 'cause two years ago I sent one of my recruiters to your school and he told me you built an holowatch from scratch. I told him to talk to your father and put you in a program for the gifted, but he said you were too young. We went back when you finished middle school and your teachers said you ran. That your grandma died and you went to school always covered in bruises. I see that scared look you got when you piss me off, and I know you don't piss me off on purpose but you get scared I might hit you or kick you out. Well, I'm not gonna. This is your home now. I only regret I didn't bring you here sooner.”

“I don't have it anymore.”

“What?”

“The holowatch. Sorry.”

“I don't want your holowatch, I got one of my own. Kid, eat your damn burger.”

“Yours glitches when you use it and doesn't transmit in colors. I can make it better, I just need the parts.”

“You're not here to make me money, kid. You're here to make me spend some. Eat your burger.”

Maria shrugs and eats. But in her mind she's already thinking about the parts she might need.

  
  


She wants to help out around the bar, mostly because there’s still a part of her that feels like Nick might kick her out, so she tries to prove she’s not just some ungrateful kid, no matter how many times he says he doesn’t want her to be grateful, he wants her to be happy.

He doesn’t want her to help around the bar but she does it anyway and it all goes okay until she hits puberty and suddenly looks like a girl. Her hoodie doesn’t fit anymore and all her shirts are too tight on her chest. It all goes okay, until it doesn’t.

Nick, the over-protective man he is, decides to make an example out of the first man who tries to grope her ass. He gets Phil to hold him down with an elbow pressing into his neck so his face is kissing the counter and Phil’s other hand is holding his arm, right hand down on the counter, palm open across the wood. Nick has a bat, an old baseball bat with a chip on the handle that he uses to get the rusty bathroom door back in place when it bends. There’s a lot of people looking and Maria knows he's doing it now so he never has to again.

He tells the sweaty man “You try to touch a girl with one single finger without her asking you to, I’m gonna break you all five of them.”

The sound the man makes when the bat comes down on his hand is a beastly thing, like a wounded animal leaning on his broken limb. That’s when she knows every man is capable of violence. Good people just use it against who deserves it.

Nick tells her it’s important to be clear. “You have to send a message, once. If you have to send it twice you weren’t clear the first time, so make sure you’re clear.”

She buys another hoodie, it’s a little lighter than the old one, but it’s still blue and just large enough to make her feel confident again. She doesn’t like to be stared at.

After that, when Nick says he doesn’t want her around the bar with all the no-good boys of the neighborhood she listens and asks him to give her another job. She’s old enough now to be shown what it is they do for a living besides feeding drinks to empty men. Nick doesn’t bring her to the room she already knows exists somewhere below, but he says she can start with the easier part. She can be their delivery girl, she’s got a bike and a backpack and that’s really all she needs.

“You weren’t born yet, when the war broke out. After the war, the government shut down every tech factory in the country, then other countries followed, and here we are. They bought back old stuff, like the holowatches you like to build, you know how they work, once they’re on your wrist and they got your fingerprint they can’t be used by anybody else. They were destroyed, and the few untouched ones were sold for an unfair amount. It’s not illegal to have one, it’s illegal to make one, you understand what I’m saying?”

“It’s not dangerous to go 'round with a backpack full of holo’s but if an agent walks into the basement they’re gonna cut our hands off.”

Nick rolls his eyes. Close enough. “We make them for people who sold them when they needed the money and now can’t buy another one, homeless people, poor people. You know those things tell you where to buy food, when it’s gonna rain, when it’s gonna snow. Poor people without those get poorer.”

“That’s why HYDRA took them away,” Maria says and she’s not wrong, but it’s not just that. It’s part of a system. Holo’s are the main source of news, too, it’s either that or the maxiscreens and those are full of old doctrines. “So this is why your side of the city despite being the poorest goes on fine.”

“That’s a part of it, yeah. We don’t just build watches here.”

“Figured,” she stuffs her hands in her hoodie's pockets.

“Remember when Mr K’s screen broke down last year? He got another one, a little older and it glitches more often than not, but he didn’t have to close his shop.”

“Yeah. He was worried ‘cause without a wallscreen you can’t keep any shop open. He sells shoes, what does he even need that for,” Maria mutters.

“Me and Phil built that. It doesn’t work eight times out of ten but he didn’t have to close.”

“Ah. He paid you?”

“A tenth the price to get a new one. We use the money for the parts we need for the holowatches and the other stuff that keeps this neighborhood afloat.”

Maria think about it for a while. Then she nods. “I can do delivery.”

And she does. She does delivery for three weeks, to be precise. Every Friday she delivers a watch to someone, gives them a proper speech to explain how it works and leave without being paid or often even thanked. The third week she asks Nick why they only send out one every week.

“'Cause that’s how fast we can make them. We’re no factory, kid.”

Maria shifts her weight from one foot to the other and gives it some thought.

“I can make one a day.”

Nick laughs and doesn’t raise his eyes from the glass he’s cleaning.

“I can make one a _day_ ,” Maria says again and she’s dead serious.

Nick looks at her with his one good eye and frowns.

“No you can’t.” Maria stays serious. “No you _can’t_ ,” he says again but he’s less convinced this time.

“One a day,” Maria nods, raising one finger to make her point.

That’s when he shows her the basement.

  
  


She comes back from delivery one day, a few weeks later, and puts three holo’s on Nick’s desk.

“Why’d you bring these to me.”

“They’re leftovers.”

“Leftovers?”

“There’s no more people who need them in the east side.”

Fury puts his pen down and looks up at her for a long moment. “Let me make a call to a friend. Maybe we can send some outside the city.”

Maria nods and he just keeps looking at him.

“Do you want something else?”

“I made a wristphone,” she inches her sleeve up. “You can place orders online and check your bank account and _get_ a bank account and a lot of other stuff you can’t do with the holo’s.”

“Where’d you even-”

“Most parts are the same and the tech is similar. I can’t make them for everyone but I can make one for you and one for Phil. The calls aren’t traceable on these and you can’t keep using holo’s forever, ‘cause you’re gonna get caught. I can just make a couple.”

He looks at her wrist one more time, then he sighs. “Just two, kid. Just two more. Don’t waste my parts.”

“Yes, Sir.”

She turns around but Nick calls for her.

“Maria? I’m proud of you.”

She doesn’t know what to say, so she nods and hastily leaves.

  
  


She finishes high school in two years. It's three weeks before her graduation when she comes home one day, she gets into the bar, up the stairs and drops her backpack into the living room. There's music coming from downstairs, it's a very old song. She's never heard it before, but she's never going to forget it.

The door of her dad's upstairs office is ajar and when she looks through the crack there's someone sitting on the office's sofa. A girl. But not just a girl. This girl has something magical about her, Maria doesn't know what it is, maybe just the old song playing in the background.

“She came here, traveled across the world, the least we can do-” Nick's voice sounds distant, maybe because she's so engrossed in that girl's features. That is, until Fury's body covers her sight. “You're back. I'll be down in a minute, tell Phil to cut off that damn music, will you? It's ancient.”

He closes the door in her face, so she goes back to the living room and picks her backpack up, then heads down again and tells Phil to turn off the music, old man's orders.

“He better not hear you call him that. Plus, it's a classic. Who doesn't like classics.”

“It's like a hundred years old.”

“I know. They don't do music like this anymore.”

Maria shrugs and heads for the back of the bar. There's a secret door in the kitchen's floor that brings to a basement. That's where she and Nick build all that stuff.

The money, she learned quickly, wasn't coming for the bar. The bar wasn't even breaking even. The money came from the not-so-legal side of business. They build some banned tech, third generation stuff, and sold them to the locals. Not just holowatches anymore, but wristphones, even wallscreens and that one car navigator one time. All the out of production stuff – the harmless stuff at least – was purchasable for a fair price there at Fury's.

And she was quickly becoming his best engineer.

She graduated high school in two years and Nick was sure she could get her degree in the same amount of time. She told him many times she wasn't gonna need it. She was gonna stay there with him, work at the bar, building holowatches in her free time and helping him to keep the east side on the right track. But he wasn't having it.

She heard what everyone said. “Fury's got a soft spot for that kid.” Maybe he did. Maybe it was fair, because Maria was loyal to him and him alone.

  
  


There's a place at the end of the street where Sam and Steve go to dance. Maria doesn't like it that much but she goes with them and sits at the counter while they dance. She tells them it's to make sure they don't get beaten up by someone they look at in the wrong way, but the truth is Maria goes there and sits at the counter, in a corner, and stares at the bartender trying not to get caught.

She's got a name tag that says Vicky and a pink strand in her hair. Maria doesn't know why she likes to look at her. She just knows they go in a place where they can't drink – she's still underage – and she doesn't even dance, just because some girl behind the counter looks pretty.

It's confusing, she doesn't like it. She wishes she could take her feeling apart and peek inside, and fix it like she fixes the holo's Nick brings her, she wishes she understood this like she would understand a wristphone. But you can't dissect emotions like you do with tech, so she's not yet sure what she's staring at, yet.

One night, when the place is close to empty, the waitress talks to her. Her full name is Victoria and she's twenty-one. Maria's seventeen but she lies and says she's turning nineteen in the spring. She doesn't know why she does it, she just thinks she has to. They talk and laugh and Maria is starting to understand what this thing she feels around her is.

Two nights after that they're walking past the back alley of that place and they see Vicky making out with some boy. They laugh and she smiles and looks up in time to see Maria, Steve and Sam look at them from the main street.

“Get a room!” Sam yells and laughs and Maria feels this heavy thing in her chest she can't get rid of for the whole week.

She never sets foot in Vicky's place again.

  
  


Sam is the first one to move away.

“I'll get a w-phone. I'll call you someday.”

Steve nods but they don't believe him. Bucky said the same thing three years before and they never heard from him again. Maria knows Sam has outgrown the east end and she doesn't try to get him to stay.

Eventually, Steve leaves too. He goes looking for Bucky in the next city over one day and Maria never sees him again. That's how it happens, sometimes.

  
  


It's the summer of 2061, June just started, and Maria's freshly graduated from the best online college they could afford and barely eighteen. She puts enough money away to buy an hold car, the cheapest she can find, an ancient Honda Accord from 2018, red, one of thee models left in the world probably. She has ten song in its memory, it's so hold Maria couldn't enhance it to remember more, but it's her baby and she wouldn't trade it for anything.

That summer one of Nick's friends from Europe comes to visit and Maria has already a plan to avoid the super classy lady she knows will show up at their door. She's still going around wearing a blue hoodie and light blue jeans, torn at the thighs where her skin can be seen. She has taken the habit of wearing the hood so people don't look weirdly at her and she's almost always walking around with a pair of aviator sunglasses on her eyes. Nick hates it. He says she looks like an edgy teen out of a 2010's movie.

Nick calls her into his office the morning his friend is scheduled to arrive and he tells her they're staying for a while, so she has to be nice. There goes Maria's plan of not talking to her at all.

“Her niece is coming with her, you're showing her 'round.”

“Come on, why me?” Maria complains for no other reason than the fact that she can. “Phil's always here playing old music that you hate, send him,” Maria waves at the man sitting on the couch by the side wall.

“Hey, watch it, kid.”

“I'm asking you 'cause I don't trust somebody else.”

“So I gotta babysit?”

“If anything she's gonna be babysitting you, kid, since she's a year older than you. Listen, you're gonna get along just fine.”

“What if we don't? What if she wants to do something lame?”

“Then you're lady lame for the summer, Maria,” Nick tells her with his final tone. “If she wanna go shopping you drive her, if she wants to see a movie you buy tickets, if she wants to go sightseeing you pull a map out of your pocket and if she wants to go to a _goddamn_ park-”

“-I'm gonna buy some bread and crush it to crumbs that she can feed the motherfucking birds.”

Nick looks like he's about to start laughing, but then he nods. “Whatever she wants you to do, you do it, kid.”

She salutes him mockingly and stuffs her hands in her pockets as she exits the bar. She can't believe this is how she's going to spend all her free time. That is, until she walks out of the bar slamming the door and there's a girl leaning on her car that looks like she lost her way and ended up there from a movie set.

Nick walks out as she's taking her sunglasses of, slowly.

“Ah, Peggy, you're here already,” there's a woman wearing a red hat he kisses on both cheeks. “Sharon, it's nice to see you again, you've grown up so much.”

Nick turns to her. Maria hasn't moved. He gestures for her to move and she complies without saying a word or talking back, probably for the first time since Nick brought her in.

“This is my kid, Maria. This is Peggy and her niece Sharon.”

Maria shakes their hands, Nick takes their bags.

“I've heard some wonderful things about you,” Peggy tell her and she's got the most endearing accent Maria has ever heard.

“Likewise.”

“So, that thing we-” Peggy starts, but Nick waves her off.

“Come inside, have a drink. Work is for tomorrow, today you settle in and we catch up. You girls are going to be okay?”

“Sure,” Maria tells him and he nods to both of them as he walks after Peggy. “You're on my car,” Maria points out, looking at the blonde.

“This is yours?”

Maria nods. “Want to-” she fishes her keys out of her pocket and presses the button that opens up the doors.

Sharon shrugs and walks around it, getting on the passenger's side.

“So, what do you wanna do?”

“Don't know. See the city?”

Maria shrugs. She can do that. She drives Sharon around and takes her to all the best places in the city, than takes her back to the east end for the night.

The next day she chaperons again without complaining when Sharon asks her to go shopping and then walk through the park. She does everything Sharon asks up until the moment Sharon tells her she wants to go back home and Maria takes her.

They sit in her car outside Fury's and talk about the place Sharon comes from. She says it's all open fields and green there. Maria listens carefully and tries not to interrupt with questions unless it's essential. Sharon tells her about her parents and her aunt and how they might have to stay the whole summer if Nick and Peggy can't work out how to build a new kind of photostatic veil. It's third generation stuff, it's one of the banned techs and they shouldn't be talking about it. When Maria points that out, Sharon laughs.

“You're Fury's kid.”

“So?”

“You're famous. I know you know about this stuff.”

“I'm famous?”

“Yeah. Aren't you the one sending the holowatches to the people outside the city?”

“So?”

“So, people use them to get online, to know where to buy food, to know where is safe and where there's guards around.”

“Those goddamn things,” Maria whispers. “One of those androids smelled the oil on my jacket once. Almost got me in handcuffs. People shouldn't struggle to live, we know how to build those watches, so why aren't we?”

“You know why. Why they took them away in the first place, why they want poor people to stay poor and misinformed. But still, you're helping the resistance. Word on the street is you're sending out a dozen a week.”

“Sometimes less, sometimes more. Depends on the parts we can get.”

It starts to get dark outside and Sharon gives her a weird look before getting out of her car. Maria does too and she leans back on the door, stuffs her hands in her pockets and watches Sharon walk back into the building where her aunt Peggy is renting an apartment for the summer.

She walks to Fury's, avoiding his office and walking straight up to her room. She spends the evening researching photostatic tech. From what she gathers, it's thousands of dollars out of their budgets, so it looks like the Carter's are spending the summer in the city.

The next morning she waits for Sharon where she watched her go the night before, on the sidewalk, leaning on her car. Sharon walks to her slowly, like she's making Maria wait on purpose.

“What's the most boring thing you can think of doing?”

Maria shrugs. “Shopping?”

“Good. We'll tell them that's how we spent the day.”

Maria doesn't say anything, doesn't ask how they're spending the day instead. Sharon just gestures for her to follow and walks back into the building she came out of. Maria follows her up the stairs and into her bedroom.

They sit there, back on the headboard and legs stretched out, talking about retaliation and politics and everything two eighteen-years-old girls shouldn't be talking about. Sharon scoots closer, she turns her head and gives Maria all the time to move back if she wants to. She doesn't, so Sharon kisses her.

Maria has her hands in her hoodie's pockets and her knees are up, so it's awkward at first. She straightens her legs and Sharon moves so she's in her lap, straddling her. Maria touches her waist clumsily, trying to find a way to make it seem more practiced.

The kiss goes on for a while, until they hear the front door open and they spun apart, trying to pretend they were doing something entirely different.

“I just left it on my nightstand probably,” they hear Peggy's voice. “Found it!”

The door closes again without anyone coming even close to Sharon's room. They burst out laughing and the moment passes. They decide they're hungry, so they go out for lunch and start talking about politics again.

  
  


Next morning, they try it in the car.

Sharon makes her drive to an abandoned lot and they get in the back seat.

It's not really romantic, the stereo's playing the same song on repeat, some twelve minutes track from the 2040's that's all basses and weird lyrics. They keep their clothes on, because if someone's catching them having sex in an empty parking lot at least they're not gonna get caught with their bottoms out in the air. Sharon's pants are too tight, that old stuff from the early 2010's that Nick is always complaining about. Maria can see his point now, because getting her hand down those skinny jeans isn't gonna work.

They find a way, eventually, with Sharon laid down on the back seat and her pants just low enough that Maria has room to move her hand. She feels too clumsy to be doing something like this, she feels like she's thirteen again, but does her best to focus. They're both too nervous, Maria bangs her head on the roof of the car two times and Sharon keeps kicking the door by accident.

It feels messy and rushed up until the point Sharon starts shaking beneath her, and suddenly Maria thinks they've being doing okay.

Sharon flips them and unbuttons Maria's jeans while they start kissing again. She's never felt like this before, never felt this light or giddy.

When they're done, they stay there for a while, sitting up in the back of the car. They don't talk much, just enough to make sure they're both alright and they're both on the same page about it being just a summer fling.

When Maria asks if it was okay Sharon laughs, and tells her that, for a genius, she can be really daft sometimes.

Yeah, Maria thinks, they've been doing okay.

  
  


“Really? Sharon Carter?”

It's been months, maybe years since she pissed Fury off this much. They managed to sneak around for about a week, before getting caught making out in Maria's car.

“What the hell were you thinking?!”

Phil's sitting on the couch and Fury's pacing in front of his desk. Maria's standing up barely inside the closed door, not daring to step further into the room.

“All the pretty girls you got around here and you go for the niece of the only woman in the world who could be able to help us!”

She got her hands in her hoodie's pockets and she hasn't been saying a word.

“You got nothing to say for yourself?”

He knows Maria always has something to say for herself, so that's on him for asking, really.

“Well... you did say I had to do what she asked. You said whatever she wanted me to do, I should do it. So really, how can it be my fault, she asked me to do it and I did as you said.”

For a second, the room is quiet. Then, Phil bursts out laughing. Fury looks at him, incredulous.

“I mean, the kid has a point. You _did_ say that.”

“Get out of here, go! I'll deal with you later, after I convince Peggy not to bail on our project. Get out of my sight, beat it!”

Maria doesn't need to be told twice. She's out the door before Phil is even standing up. She steps sideways and waits to hear how pissed off Fur really is.

“You have to admit, she has good taste,” she hears Phil say.

Nick's soft laughter reaches her ears a second later. “ _She asked me to do it and you said to do what she asked_ ,” he repeats. “That kid's really something else.”

“It's why you have a soft spot for her.”

“Yeah, I guess it is.”

Maria smiles, then walks out of the bar and into the street. Sharon's leaning on her car, arms crossed and smirk on her face. Maria leans next to her.

“Don't be sad,” Sharon says, pushing away from the car and stepping in front of Maria, taking her aviator sunglasses from the V neck of her shirt and putting them on her face. She kisses Maria on the cheek and walks back up to her aunt's apartment, while Maria gets into her car and drive without knowing where to, a small smile on her lips.

  
  


Fury tries to keep her as busy as he can possibly manage, so she can't see Sharon even if she decides to disobey him. He sends her out for deliveries and when they don’t have any she goes with Phil around the block. They just make the rounds, go into every shop, take a look around, if the owners approach them to ask for something Phil writes it down using a code.

People stop them and ask him for stuff, then nod to Maria when he says she’s Fury’s kid. Maria thought they were dealers. They’re not. They’re fixers, for these people at least.

Until one day, two men follow them into an alley and try to beat the life out of them. Phil gets the worst of it, because Maria carries a stick in her hoodie full of electrifying chips. She plays with it when she’s bored and has never had to use it before. She sticks one of those to one of the men’s chest and fries him so much that he’s gonna have a scar for the rest of his life, small and round like a cigarette’s burn, in the middle of his chest. When he passes out she does the same with the other man. Phil is bleeding from his mouth and has a large bruise on his side, but he’s gonna live.

She waits outside the downstairs office and hears everything they don’t want to tell her to her face.

“They were Red Room. Mercenaries HYDRA hires for the jobs government shouldn’t be caught doing. We gotta call R,” Phil says.

“To tell her what?” Fury asks. “We can’t help. We don’t have the photostatic veil, we don’t have weapons.”

“Nick, Maria was- you gotta send her to R. She was with me. She could’ve-”

“She doesn’t have a scratch, you’re the one half dead bleeding on my couch.”

“We can’t help, you said so. Not in the grand scheme of things. But she can. So tell me, what is she still doing here?”

There’s silence and Maria hates it. It’s louder than any words she has ever heard before, because it can only mean he's agreeing with Phil.

“Nick,” Phil answers his own question, “she’s here 'cause she’s your kid. But you gotta give her her best chance. You and I both know that's not here.”

Maria goes to the kitchen and down to the basement and doesn’t come out until she has built herself a gun. Well, not a gun. It’s a shockgun, a small black cylinder that shoots out those electrifying little chips, has twenty of them loaded. She was working on it before Sharon came around and she’s been distracted but it’s finished now. She can show it to Nick and he’ll forgive her, he has to. He can’t _not_ forgive her, can he?

When Nick calls her back into his office he’s pouring himself a glass of cheap whiskey and that’s never been a good sign.

“I got you a job.”

“Thought I was already working for you.”

“No, I got you a proper job, where you can put that degree of yours to good use.”

“I’m fine here.”

He sighs and takes a sip from his glass and finally turns to face her. “The day I finally tracked you down, you remember it? The first thing you said to me that wasn’t an answer to a question I asked was something like...” he taps his forehead like he’s trying hard to remember.

“I said your car was dusty.”

He laughs. “Yeah. Yeah, that’s what you said. I knew I’d like you then, you’re not nice to people who wanna help you 'cause you know, if they really want to, they’re gonna even if you’re shit to them. But here’s the thing, kid. Nobody wants to help you out there. I’m your-” he pauses because he has never said that before and it’s a thing they don’t really talk about.

But this time, Maria wants to.

“You’re not my father. My father was shit. You’re a hundred times the man he was, that’s why I never called you that. But you know I-” she can’t say that to her old man. It’s not how they do things.

“Me too, kid,” Nick says. “The job I got you, you’re gonna love it. _Don’t_ go and mess it up.”

“What if I wanna stay?”

“You’ve outgrown this place.”

“That’s not fair.”

“Have you taken a look around this side of town, lately? Life’s not fair.”

“I have. I’m out on our streets everyday, who’s gonna go if I’m not here?”

He sighs, gulps down his whiskey. “These are not our streets anymore, kid. Two years ago, or hell, even two months ago, nobody would have dared to lay a finger on you. Me and Phil will get by, don’t worry about us. You’re going to New York, a friend of mine’s gonna make sure you do okay.”

“This R guy you and Phil were talking about?”

Nick doesn't seem overly surprised Maria has been eavesdropping. “Yeah.”

Maria doesn’t want to go, she doesn’t like how things are happening. But she’s sure she doesn’t really get a vote anyway.

“I got something for you,” she says. She hands him the black cylinder, explains how it works. “It's a shockgun.”

“We don’t do weapons,” Fury says, his tone hard.

“Yeah, I know” Maria nods. “That’s why these aren’t our streets anymore. Next time I won’t be there to get Phil out so just take this. I made him one, too. And I’m taking one with me. It just looks like a stick, but if you press the button at the end of it, it shoots an electrifying chip, it's how I took down those guys.”

Nick looks at her, really looks at her. They say there’s a moment when you look at your kid and you realize there’s no kid in the room anymore. Maria’s been with him for six years, and for the first time Fury looks at her and feels like he doesn’t know what she’s gonna do next, who she’s gonna become, and he realizes she’s outgrown him like she’s outgrown their city, too.

He hugs her tight like he’s never hugged her before and he prays she’s gonna forgive him someday.

“I love you, kid.”

Maria hugs him back. She knows he’s doing what’s best for her, but it doesn’t make going any less hard.

“I love you, too.”

  
  


And so it goes, she leaves the only place she’s ever known with a backpack and a half empty duffle bag. She leaves her car in Nick’s garages, covered with a sheet she isn’t sure she’ll ever get to lift again. She leaves Phil her sunglasses and goes to wave at Sharon from across the street.

Nick takes her to the airport and watches her get past the agents at the front doors without following her inside. They nod to each other from across the glass and Maria turns away, walking fast, afraid that if she takes too long to reach her plane her feet will know what she’s leaving and will refuse to carry her.

  
  


 


	2. should I stay or would it be a sin?

New York is garbage.

Everyone’s wealthy and the few people who aren’t have been pushed out of town or are working for someone who is. They pretend not to see the people sleeping in their parks or in the covered alleys, they pretend this city is the Center of the World. Maybe it is, what the fuck does Maria know about geography.

A cab takes her to the address Nick gave her and when she gets out after paying the driver her first thought is she’s on the wrong street. She’s standing in the sidewalk of a classy building with two men at the entrance, one on each side of the front door, dressed in funny hats and ancient shirts, it’s a 1900’s looks if Maria has ever seen one.

She walks up to one of them and is about to open her mouth when she realizes who he is.

“Steve?”

“Maria,” he smiles at her like he’s seeing the ocean for the first time. “He sent you,” Steve says and hugs her quickly, before remembering he’s not supposed to. “I mean,” he takes a step back. “Welcome to New York.”

Maria looks him up and down and there’s something wrong with him. He’s double the man he was, that’s not just puberty hitting him, it can’t be.

He leans to her and whispers “We’re not supposed to know each other. I was told to say I’ve never left Brooklyn in my life before coming here to work.”

Maria is baffled. She looks to the other side of the door and Sam winks at her. He’s not that different, but he’s older and better looking.

“I’m looking for R,” Maria says.

“No you’re not,” Sam says out loud, then side eyes Steve.

“R doesn’t exist,” Steve whispers. “You’re here to ask Mr Stark for a job.”

“Right. Stark Industries,” she waves the piece of paper Nick has given her. “Ask for a job.”

She nods, then takes a step ahead, then thinks the best of it and sidesteps to punch Sam in the shoulder. “Should’ve called like you said you would,” she whispers, then she walks ahead.

There's a man at the front desk who asks for her ID. Maria loads it on her w-phone and shows it to him, he checks it out and lets her in. Another man takes her to an elevator and up to the nineteenth floor, where he tells her Stark's office is, end of the corridor on the right. He goes back down and Maria walks right on, her duffle bag heavy on her hand.

In front of the office there's a desk. Maria nods to the guy sitting there and says “I'm here to see Mr Stark.”

The guy looks her up and down and barely holds back a smirk. “Go right ahead,” he tells her, and she's half sure he's setting her up to embarrass herself, but she can't really back down at this point.

The offices are all vintage furniture and what looks like very expensive decor, so she's positive walking in dressed in a hoodie and with a duffle bag and backpack is an horrendous idea. But alas, she can't turn back and walk away, so in she goes.

She knocks on the door and waits for a faint “come in” from the other side before opening it and walking in.

“Send it down to marketing, see if there's a way they can sell it, and-” he has to do a double take when Maria walks in. The woman standing up beside him turns to her and stands up straighter, almost like she's assessing her. “Hello.”

“Good morning, Mr Stark.”

“Can I help you?”

“I'm here for a job.”

He nods with a smile as an unsurprised sound leaves his lips. “Unfortunately, we're not really hiring at the moment. I can reference you to a building a couple blocks down-”

“Actually,” she interrupts him before realizing she has. “Sorry. Actually, I was already told there was a job here for me.”

The woman with blonde hair beside him taps his shoulder subtly, but he gestures for her to wait for a moment.

“What's your name?” Stark looks her up and down again.

“Maria. Maria Hill.”

The woman tries to get his attention for the second time, even goes as far as to whisper “Tony” softly to him, but the man doesn't listen.

“Look, Maria, I'm sure you're a great- what is it that you do?”

“Tony,” the woman whispers so low Maria's barely able to hear her and she's standing three feet away from the desk they're behind. “She's Fury's kid.”

“I have an engineering degree. I think I'm supposed to start as a manufacturer?”

“Tony.”

“Well, that's great but unfortunately it doesn't seem- _what_?” he finally turns to the woman trying to get his attention.

“Tony. She's Fury's kid.”

He stares at her for a second longer, than turns back to Maria. Doubt fills his eyes.

“You're Fury's kid? Wasn't kidding on the kid part, was he? How old are you?”

“Nineteen, sir.”

“And you're an engineer?”

“Yes, but I'm starting as a manufacturer,” she repeats.

He gets up, walks around the desk and leans on its edge, assessing Maria again.

“Why don't you let me,” he clicks his tongue, then rubs his forehead with his thumb and closes his eyes. “Why don't you let me make a call to Nick, talk this out with him for a second.”

Maria thinks it's the duffle bag. She shouldn't have walked in carrying all the stuff she owns in the world. She puts it down and gets her backpack off her shoulders, opens it up and fishes out a small box.

“I brought you something.”

He stares at the box, than looks back at the woman beside his desk, than back at her and again at the box. He takes it and opens it up reluctantly.

“Cufflinks. Wow. Thank you, kid, that's very thoughtful, but-” he closes the box again and is about to toss it onto his desk when Maria stops him.

She takes back the box and takes out the cufflinks. “These aren't just cufflinks, sir. Look, if you open them you can wear them normally, but if you take the head and rotate it ninety degrees to the left...” she demonstrates with one of the cufflinks and the head comes right off. “Now see this inside, this is a small chip, you stick it to someone's skin and they get shocked into unconsciousness. If someone attacks you and you have these with you, you can get out unscratched and they won't even know how.”

Tony stares down at the cufflink in Maria's hand. He takes it back, walks to the window just to get a better look under a stronger light, then puts it back into its support and tries to open it up again. He then tries to wear them and the clips opens and closes perfectly without triggering the detachment.

“They're completely undetectable, you can wear them and carry them with you at all times and no security system in the world will be able to detect them, not even the best one.”

“How do you know?”

“Isn't yours the best security system in the world?” Maria gestures vaguely at the floor. “I just brought them up in my backpack.”

He stares at her for a long moment, then turns back to the woman by his desk. “Pepper! Fury's kid is here,” he says like he's the one warning her for the first time about the matter.

“Indeed. I've already called for someone to escort her back to her apartment to leave her belongings and then to buy some proper outfits, she's going to start tomorrow down at Manufacturing.”

“Yes!” Tony walks to her, takes her shoulders into his hands. “You're gonna start tomorrow at Manufacturing,” his smile is bright. Then, it evaporates in a second and he becomes serious and even slightly intimidating. “Never walk into my office without being announced again. Never walk dressed like that into this building again. Never, ever, _ever_ , bring something illegal into Stark Industries again or I'll have you fired on the spot, understood?”

“Oh. Yes, sir.”

“Good,” he lets go of her shoulders and the smile returns. “I'll be keeping the cufflinks.”

“Yes, sir. That is generally how presents work.”

Tony tries his hardest not to smile. “You're just like your old man. Now go, shoo.”

Maria nods, picks up her stuff, and walks out before she can turn this into an ever bigger mess. She walks out, but right outside the door she stops dead in her tracks.

That's when she sees her.

Maria doesn't know why, but the second their eyes meet an old song starts playing in her head, like her subconscious remembers something she doesn't. It's transfixing, Maria has never seen someone for the first time and felt quite like this before in her life.

“You're the new one?”

Maria blinks, then nods. The woman offers a hand that Maria shakes for a second longer than strictly necessary.

“I'm Natasha Romanoff. Follow me,” the woman says, looking her up and down. “We're going to have a busy day ahead of us.”

She turns and starts walking and Maria blinks again, twice, then follows. The man at the desk outside Stark's office is smirking and Maria gives him a look that says “We're gonna get even, soon” and then hurries up after the woman she just met.

  
  


The first thing she learns about Natasha Romanoff, is that she never slows down for anyone else, it's your job to be able to keep up, because she walks fast and doesn't turn back.

They reach a car in the parking lot and Natasha opens the back door. Maria frowns, considering if the woman might want her to ride in the back like she's taking a cab, but the woman nods down.

“Your bags.”

“Right,” Maria immediately goes into motion, putting both her duffle bag and backpack into the backseat.

The woman gets into the driver seat and Maria has the impulse to speed up her walk to the passenger door, because for a second she thinks the woman will start the car and go if Maria isn't able to keep up. She doesn't want to know if she's right, so she hurries and gets in.

The first few seconds are filled with silence, it's awkward to Maria, she's used to the noise. She tries to find something to say, but topics elude her, so she goes for the easiest subject.

“So, I'm in manufacturing. You're in security?”

The woman shoots her an incredulous look, before turning back to the street.

“How old are you again?”

“Nineteen,” Maria says, and resist the urge to add some years like she's underage and sitting at Vicky's counter again.

The woman doesn't let out anything more than a slightly concerned sound. “That was the first and last time you said those words,” Maria is about to protest her age isn't that outrageous, when Natasha clarifies for her. “There is no manufacturing. It doesn't exist. You work as a junior manager at Mr Stark's trading company. I work in HR.”

“Right,” Maria mutters. She looks down at her clothes and thinks the ones in her bag won't be much better if she has to pretend to be a manager.

“So what do you do?”

“I built tech, holo's, w-phones-” Maria starts without thinking.

“I _just_ -” the woman sighs. “What do you _do_?”

Maria feels a little intimidated, a little dumb. “I'm a junior manager at a business company.”

“I never want to hear you answer that question differently ever again.”

“Right. Okay. I'm a junior manager,” the words roll wrong on her tongue. She doesn't like the taste of it. “And you're Natasha Romanoff, in HR.”

“Good.”

Natasha doesn't say anything else and Maria avoids starting another conversation, in fear of making the same mistake twice.

When the car finally gets parked, they're on a street Maria recognizes passing on her way from the airport just over an hour before. It's a couple of blocks from Stark's Industries, it's fancy but not so fancy that she'll get thrown out for wearing a hoodie, at least she hopes so.

Natasha goes through the door of the shop without checking if Maria is still following, but of course Maria is. The shop is a fancy dressing shop. There's suits and ties and shirts and high fashion dresses all over the place, beautifully displayed. Maria gets lost for a second, taking in everything around her, when a voice brings her back to the present.

“Natasha! Hello,” a woman says with an accent Maria can't quite place.

“Hi, Mrs Giuliani. How are you today?”

“I'm fine, old age sits well with me,” the woman laughs and waves the joke away. “What can I do for...” her eyes scan Maria and she makes a face “...you. Ah, yes.”

“Another manager Mr Stark hired,” Natasha explains.

“Oh, these kids he hires,” the woman walks around the counter and up to Maria, taking her chin in her hand and scanning her face. “I'd swear they get younger and younger,” she says, then her eyes move down and she grabs Maria's hoodie, yanking it back to se how larger it is than it needs to be.

“Hey,” Maria moves out of reach and smooths out the cramped up fabric.

“Off,” the woman orders and turns around to grab a measure tape from the counter. “Off it goes, that baggy thing.”

Maria frowns, but the woman takes a few quick measurements despite her not obeying, then disappears in the back of the shop.

“You better listen,” Natasha warn her sternly.

“She's not very patient?”

“Extremely, actually. I'm the one who's not.”

Maria stares at her trying to figure out if she's messing with her, and Natasha stares right back, her eyes don't give anything away.

“Here,” the woman says when she comes back. “Try this.”

The woman hands her a few items and points her to a changing room. She shoo's her away until Maria complies and gets into it. She sighs a little, but gets to work, knowing resistance would be futile.

The shirt is white and the suit is black. She walks out tugging the skirt down, and wearing her shoes instead of the heels the woman gave her.

“Do I have to wear a skirt and does it have to be this short? And I can't walk on heels. Never had a pair.”

Natasha is looking at her, one eyebrow up and a menacing look, but the older woman is just staring her down, muttering something to herself. She nods and disappears again. Natasha is still staring at her and Maria just shrugs. Mrs Giuliani comes back a few minutes later with another set of items in her hands.

“Try these instead,” she orders and Maria sighs and obeys.

When she comes out of the dressing room, Natasha's bored eyes light up a little and Mrs Giuliani smiles brightly. Maria's wearing a white shirt with a black pant suit, and oxford shoes.

“Yes. This will do,” the older woman nods and checks the shoulders to make sure the size is a perfect fit. “How many?”

Maria is about to open her mouth and ask what she means, but Natasha doesn't give her the time.

“Let's do seven plus a formal one, I think red will do fine, green too, black obviously,” she starts to count and Maria realizes they're talking about the suits.

“No. No, no red, definitely no green. I can do black, grey, _maybe_ dark blue.”

“You're trying me,” Mrs Giuliani shakes her head. “Two black, two light grey, two dark blue and a light blue in case you ever discover what joy is, young girl. But you're trying me,” she sighs. “If you wear a grey shirt with a grey suit I'll hunt you down, kid. I'll give you three white, three light blue and three grey, yes?”

Maria nods. “Thank you, Mrs Giuliani.”

“Yes. Natasha will pick your ties,” she says with her accent and for a moment Maria thinks it sounds like she's sure she's going to get revenge over the meek colors Maria chose. “I'll be ready in an hour.”

“Surely,” Natasha smiles. “We'll be next door.”

Natasha goes for the door and Maria's first instinct is to chase after her, but she's still wearing the suit, so she goes back and changes. Once she exits the shop, Natasha's waiting for her, hands in her leather jacket, looking up and down the street.

“Ready,” Maria says, and Natasha opens the door for another shop.

They pick shoes and Natasha pays with a Stark Industries card, then they pick the clothes once they're ready and Natasha pays again. The third stop is lunch, then a new haircut that isn't so obviously self made. They go back in the car and Natasha stops outside a grocery shop, just pointing it out to Maria and giving her the times it's open, only to get back into driving without exiting the car.

When they park again, is a residential building.

Natasha gives her a set of keys and a number, then helps Maria carry the bag to a front door marked by the number 512.

“Stark owns the building, the rent is as low as possible, most of his employees live here. It's maintenance and taxes, basically.”

“You live here, too?”

“No, I live inside the Stark Building.”

“Okay. So who else lives here? Steve or Sam or-”

“You don't know a Steve or Sam.”

“Right.”

“Practice. Get better. One mistake can cost you your life.”

“Right, yes.”

Natasha stares her up and down, then lets it go. “Settle in. You start tomorrow, 9 to 5, one hour lunch break. Never wear that hoodie again.”

She walks away without a goodbye and Maria is left staring after her. She gets in, settles in, then takes a hard long look in the mirror. She unzips the hoodie slowly and takes it off, with an heavy feeling in the pit of her stomach that tells her it might be the last time she has to.

  
  


Maria wakes up her first day of work and puts on a white shirt and light grey suit, and a light blue tie Natasha had picked. She packs the basic tools she thinks she might need and puts them inside the briefcase Natasha got her, planning to leave them at work and using her spares at home if she needs to. When she arrives, Sam is the only one at the door, he smirks and winks when she passes by, whispering “nice tie” when she passes by. She wants to punch him again, but thinks better of it.

The elevator brings her up to the seventh floor, and she gives her name to the man who greets her, he takes her to a cubicle office, tells her that's her spot. There's a drawer with a key under her desk and he tells her she can keep any tools there and nobody will have a copy of the key. He says the computer has a browser history programmed into it and everything else she looks up won't be shown, so it's safe to use it for any doubt she might have. He says there's a software to program parts and, on a small table in the left corner, the furthest from the door, there's a small 3D printer so she can print them out.

“Sorry, you design and print your own parts?”

“Plastic and metal are cheap. Tech isn't. We can built every piece we need without having to look for it.”

Maria nods and bites her tongue.

“Don't you know how to do that?”

Maria notices concern in his voice, and can see him glance down at his notes, maybe to see if there's another spot he can assign her to, or to check he has the right person.

“I can design,” Maria says, not wanting to tell him she never saw a 3D printer in her life until two minutes ago and can't wait to get her hands on it.

“Okay,” he sighs in relief. “You'll get a note in the morning with your assigned daily job. It's easy stuff, below the tenth floor it's just basic tech,” he laughs at a joke Maria doesn't understand. “I'll leave you to it,” he says and hands her a note.

When he leaves, Maria sits down and looks around. The space is small, maybe six square feet if not smaller, but there's everything she needs. She looks down at her note and it just say “Holowatch, Model 4”, and it's a little lame to her that it has to be even said, like people even design the third model anymore.

She takes off her jacket, rolls up her sleeves, and gets to work.

There's a software in her laptop with a few basic models for the main parts. She has a few adjustments to make here and there, but all in all they're already pretty on point. She adds new sheets and designs the few missing parts, then goes ahead and tries to print them. They come out perfect.

Everything else she needs, like screws and glass, it's in a container below the table where the printer is and she's barely getting started when the man from before – her boss, she assumes – knocks on her door.

“Did you figure out the printer?”

She nods.

“Good. Have it ready by the end of the day.”

He's about to turn, when Maria speaks up.

“How many?”

He turns again and frowns at her. “What?”

“How many do I have to do by the end of the day?”

“Oh, one, obviously. It's your first day and everyone uses different designs, so if you can't finish one your first day that's not a problem, you'll get a chance to finish it tomorrow or I can send someone to help you out.”

Maria thinks he's making fun of her, for a moment, but he seems to actually mean it.

“As you work on different stuff you'll slowly add more designs to your software and eventually you'll be able to work on a piece a day pretty easily. First month is usually the hardest. You can stay a little longer after five, but extra hours aren't paid.”

He seems kind, so Maria nods.

After he leaves she looks at the clock signaling eleven and then at the parts on her desk, already printed and ready to be assembled. She'll have finished roughly by three, even taking it extra slowly to be precise and counting an hour lunch break.

She sighs, shrugs, and gets it done.

  
  


Maria does end up staying after five. There's a secure internet connection, her boss said, and Fury's back home struggling to get the parts for a prostatic veil – something she can easily build with spares. Most of the stuff she needs, it's similar to the things she already has. There's a few pieces that are very different, so she doesn't think she'll be able to make it. The designs seem hard, harder than anything she's ever built before. But that, of course, doesn't stop her.

It's dark outside when she's finished her research, and she has a pretty good idea about how she'll need to design everything, but she's not sure she should try it. Mr Stark explicitly said to never bring something illegal inside his building again.

So she turns everything off, delivers her holowatch with a tag with her initials on it as she has been instructed to do, she puts it in a box just outside the main office of the floor like her boss said, then goes home.

As she's leaving she slips a note in Steve's pockets and then walks away without turning.

And just like that, her first day at Stark Industries is over.

  
  


Her second day goes similarly. Her boss smiles when handing her another note, saying he appreciates her staying longer to finish the work, and ignoring Maria's disappointed look when she sees she has to make another holowatch.

She has all the parts, so she gets it done by the end of the morning, and then ponders if she should maybe ask the man for something else to do. She's about to do so when one of her coworkers notices her approaching the Big Box – that's what she's calling it in her head – and stops her.

“You did this in half a day?”

“I did this in a half a morning,” she says. She did a little more research, until lunch time.

“You can't tell him that. They'll fire the rest of us, there's only four of us on this floor, plus the manager. If you can do all our jobs, they'll just keep _you_.”

Maria looks at him for a long moment, then nods. She doesn't know if she's doing the right thing, what she does know is that the man looks desperate and she has seen enough desperate men to know he needs this job more than she does, so it's better if they find out and she gets fired for slacking on the job, rather that she going to the manager and getting three people fired.

She walks back to her desk and locks the watch inside the drawer, then takes her key with her and walk out of the building and into the side alley. When she gets there, Steve is already waiting for her.

She hasn't even stopped walking that he's already hugging her, not caring about what it would look like if someone sees. He's strong and taller and something is wrong with him.

“What happened to you?” Maria leans back and takes a good look at him. “Your arm is bigger than your chest used to be.”

“Not here,” he says. “Give me your door number, I'll be there tonight. I think we live in the same building.”

Maria hesitates. He's so different, she even barely recognizes him. But when she touches his cheek and looks in his eyes – it's her Steve. It's her best friend. He has to be.

“I thought-” she shakes her head. “You didn't call or write or- I thought you were dead. 512. Eight o'clock.”

Steve nods and Maria wants to say something else, wants to tell him everything he's missed about his best friend when he went looking for his former one, but she can't. She can't. So she turns around and gets back to her office without lunch and sits at her desk thinking about how unfair life has been, how everyone could choose when to leave Fury's but her, how she had to leave Phil and Fury and Sharon, how Steve and Sam and James never looked back. She's not gonna be like that, she doesn't know how to.

She leaves at half past seven with the better part of a photostatic veil designed on her computer.

  
  


When she gets to her apartment, Steve is outside her door, waiting like a lost puppy, like he's sixteen again. For a moment, he looks as small as he used to be.

“I wanted to call. I wanted to visit, I did. It was too risky. Fury said not to visit and Stark said to cut all contacts with the past. They can't explain why I look like this without being exposed, so I took another identity, born in Brooklyn but never left for Chicago, never lived there, never met Fury. Never met you.”

Maria plays with her keys for a second, then opens the door.

“Why _do_ you look like this?” she asks as soon as the door closes behind them.

Steve hesitates. “Stark is planning something. I can't- it's...complicated.”

“You can't tell me,” Maria supplies.

“They had a serum. Sam and Bucky-”

“James is here, too?”

Steve nods. “We want to help. They had...stuff, experimental stuff. They enhanced us.”

“Sam looked the same.”

“It's a different kind of enhancement. I can't say anything else.”

Maria bites her tongue again. “You shouldn't be here.”

“I couldn't stay home,” he says, almost sad, almost regretful. They grew up together and only three out of the four of them left. Maria got left behind.

“I meant in my apartment. We shouldn't know each other, you said so. You should go.”

He knows Maria's pissed off, but he still looks hurt when she asks him to leave. A faint memory comes back in his mind of that one time Maria and Sam threw Fred Anderson into a bin when he made fun of Steve for always being sick. He knew Maria liked him when he didn't like himself, but now that he likes himself he's afraid Maria won't love him anymore.

Maria takes his hand after he steps out of the door and looks into his eyes again.

“Is Bucky-”

“He's okay.” Steve knows Maria doesn't believe him for a second. “He's alive.”

Maria nods and lets go of his hand slowly. “Phil missed you,” she says, because she can't tell him she missed him too.

“I missed him, I missed everyone.”

Maria nods and swallows back the bitter words about how he should have called then. She closes the door without looking back up and feels so angry and lonely and like she's thirteen again, when she didn't have anybody in the world but herself.

And again, she doesn't think life is fair. But this is still the only life she can lead.

  
  


The first week goes by, Maria works every morning on holowatches and every afternoon on the new designs for the photostatic veil – the last part is tricky, but by Friday night it's finally done.

She's leaving work late at night when she gets to the entrance and she sees Natasha Romanoff. She's chatting with Steve and has a hand on his arm and for some reason Maria doesn't like that. Sam is there, too, and he's looking like a third wheel who would rather be anywhere else. Maria plans on marching up to the door and get away without even turning her head, after all she's not supposed to know them, and get to her apartment and call home.

But she isn't even at the door when Natasha calls her by name.

“Hill, you're leaving late.”

Maria stops, looks up and nods. “Got caught up in something. You're leaving late, too.”

“I'm not leaving. I live here, remember?”

“Right,” she smiles tightly and goes to leave when Natasha's voice makes her stop in her tracks again.

“This is Steve Rogers and Sam Wilson, they work here, too. This is Maria Hill.”

Maria looks down when Steve offers his hand. He smiles in that charming way Maria could never stand.

“Nice to meet you,” he says. “I think I saw you in the same building I live.”

Maria grabs his hand too tight but she doubts he even feels it. “Yeah, your face looks somewhat familiar, I might have seen you around.”

“I live in 303, if you're ever up for a drink. Sam is in 302.”

Maria knows what he's doing. Establishing contact in front of someone so they can start to hang out together. But Maria isn't sure she's ready for that. She isn't sure Steve understands how she feels, like everyone has given up on her, like Fury, who took her in and promised she'd always have a place there, kicked her out. He forced her to go. They've all been lying to her for years and Maria never had a say in anything.

“I'll keep that in mind,” she says, and leaves without looking back.

She hates that, out of everything Fury taught her, forgiveness is the one thing she was never good at. She hates how things are. But it's how they have to be, at least for now.

  
  


Her first weekend, she goes to every touristic spot in the city. Well, not every single one, but she goes to a few, tries to keep busy, tries not to think about how she dialed Fury's five times since Friday and never pressed the call button.

She goes back to work almost relieved and throws herself into her tasks. She keeps aside every spare ounce of materials she has and has her colleagues do the same. They don't know what it's for, but they don't need it and Maria saves them the trouble of having to throw it away, so they just hand it to her.

It's two full weeks before she even has the plastic to build the support she needs to assemble it, but she's slowly getting there.

She sees Steve everyday walking in and Sam every night walking out and does her best to be polite but sometimes it's hard to look at them. She doesn't know why she's so angry and sad or whom she's angry at, but she knows everything's too much. She knows, for once, she wants to do stuff her pace instead of everyone else's.

Sam gives her space but Steve still looks at her like he hopes she'll smile at him today. Maria doesn't. She can't. And she hates it, she hates New York and she hates building holowatches that are just getting stocked in a room somewhere for all she knows. She's not helping people, she's not a fixer anymore. She doesn't know what or who's she working for anymore.

Except, of course, when she's working on the veil. Stark said not to take anything illegal in, after all. He never said anything about bringing something out.

  
  


There's a bar on the next block over, past her apartment, and the bartender is a middle aged man who barely speaks to costumers and makes a very good Americano, so Maria starts spending some evening there. It's the third night she goes, when someone stops at her table, in the far corner, and loudly drags a chair away from the table before sitting down.

Maria looks up and Natasha Romanoff is staring at her. She raises her glass and Maria clicks her own against it.

“White Russian?” Maria asks looking at the drink in the redhead's hand.

She nods and then looks at Maria's hand. “Americano? There's a joke to be made in there, somewhere,” Natasha says and Maria almost smiles.

They're silent for a moment.

“He misses you. He's moping around like a puppy, it's unsettling to watch.”

Maria swallows the answer on the tip of her tongue and instead says “I don't know who you're talking about. I'm new in town, I don't know anyone here.”

Natasha keeps looking at her and smirks when her own instructions are used against her. “That's not true, you know me. And you know my favorite bar, apparently.”

“So you _do_ come here often, was just about to ask you that.”

Natasha pauses and if she recognized Maria's words as flirting she certainly doesn't let Maria know. “Do you miss him too?”

“I'm not after your boyfriend,” Maria finishes her drink.

Natasha doesn't take the bait. She waits, patiently. “Do you?” she asks again.

Maria looks at the counter and gets up. She walks up to the bartender and pays her bill via her holowatch, thanks him and tells him her drink was perfect when he asks if it was good. Before leaving she walks back to the table again and buttons the jacket of her suit after straightening the green tie Natasha bought for her.

When Maria looks in her eyes, there's no malice there, no possessiveness, no rage. Just curiosity and something else Maria can't read because she doesn't know Natasha that well.

“I do,” she says. “I miss how I felt when I had him by my side.”

The second part isn't planned. It just comes out. And Maria's taken aback as much as Natasha is in hearing those words.

Maria leaves without saying anything else, because she knows she can't explain what she meant, not to Natasha Romanoff, not right now. So she goes and pretend she never said anything at all.

  
  


She gets to the bar the night after that and Natasha's sitting at her table with a drink in one hand and an Americano in front of an empty seat waiting to be attended to.

Natasha looks at her, doesn't wave her over, doesn't smile.

Their glasses click and they drink in silence for a while. Maria has heard the rumors about Natasha sleeping with Steve, sleeping with Sam, sleeping with Stark. She's heard the rumors about her killing her first husband and about how she's waiting for Stark to pop the question so she can marry him and then kill him too. She's heard the rumors about Natasha escaping Russia by swimming to Alaska. Maria doesn't usually listens to rumors, but she can't stop picturing the woman sitting on her right swimming through freezing waters to another continent.

“So you're Russian.”

“I am. And you're American. I feel like we've had this conversation before.

“I'm from Chicago,” Maria says. “Never left it my whole life.”

“Your parents never took you to the sea?”

“I didn't have-” she shrugs. “If you know Steve that well you probably know the man who helped him get by in Chicago, Nick?” Maria waits and Natasha nods. Maria shrugs again. “Nick was the one who raised me.”

Natasha's face go blank. She blinks. “You're Fury's kid.”

It's not a question. And it's not just casual, it's a sentence that means something, apparently. Maria frowns slightly, because Natasha was the one insisting she could never speak like she was doing a different job than manager or knowing people she wasn't supposed to know. But now here Natasha was, admitting that those words meant something bigger than they should.

Her demeanor changes immediately. She stands up straighter and turns slightly away from Maria, drowning her drink in a long gulp and getting up, paying the tab and leaving Maria to stare after her.

Whatever happened a moment before, Maria doesn't understand the last bit of it.

 


	3. like a river flows surely to the sea

Her fourth week at SI is coming to an end and she's there at half past seven still working on the last few small changes on the photostatic veil she has built, when there's a knock on her office door.

“Come in,” she says before she can think it through, and she quickly shoves the support she uses to work on the veil inside her drawer.

“Hey, do you have a minute?”

Natasha is the last person Maria expects to see there, after the hasty exit she made a few nights before, but she still nods. The redhead walks in and closes the door, even though the entire floor is empty.

“I was taking a look at the times you logged out since you've been here and you've been staying past your shift a lot. Every day, in fact.”

Maria tries not to give away anything, but she's painfully aware the drawer is still open and there's something inside it that she shouldn't have.

“You know we don't pay overtime, don't you?”

Maria nods. “My manager mentioned it. He said I could stay if I wanted to but it's not paid.”

“We pay on commission, or, well, on workload. If you're having trouble keeping up I can help you. I see you're making all the deadlines but it's taking you two or three extra hours every day. Design can be hard and that software is far from perfect. Nobody expects you to be perfect at it your first month.”

Maria nods again, but she's barely listening. She tries to do it subtly, tries not to draw Natasha's attention to her left hand as she closes the drawer, but something must get caught in it, because it makes a loud noise and doesn't even close properly.

Natasha's eyes immediately move to it. When she looks back at Maria she must see something there that gives her away, because a moment after she's rounding her desk and dragging the drawer open slowly.

“Technically, I didn't break Mr Stark's rules.”

Natasha stares at her, raising an eyebrow. “When you have to add _technically_ to that sentence, it usually means you did it but have thought of a loophole while doing it.”

“Well, he said not to bring anything illegal in. I never brought anything in.”

“What is this?” Natasha asks, ignoring her excuses.

Maria takes the support out and uses it to calibrate it, passing it in the air in front of Natasha's face slowly, top to bottom, before taking the veil out and putting it on her own face. A moment after, Natasha is staring at herself.

“Photostatic veil. Nick needed one but he couldn't quite figure it out. Even if he had, most of these pieces are too rare and too complicated. I didn't steal anything but the spares at the end of the day, they were going to be thrown out anyway,” Maria defends herself. She takes the veil off and puts it back into the support she created. “I just wanted to help Nick. To prove to him I could help him if he'd just-”

“Stop. You made this out of spare materials in a month?”

Maria shakes her head. “I made the first draft in two weeks, I figured there wasn't much use for just a single one,” she says and opens the drawer further.

“You made _three_ in four weeks?”

Maria wants to say how she could have done more but didn't have enough spares to do so, but she feels it's better if she just shuts up.

“Come with me.”

Natasha picks up all three of them and starts walking. Maria grabs her jacket and unfolded tie and hurries after her, not knowing what is about to happen, but strongly suspecting Natasha is firing her and escorting her out of the building. Once they get into the elevator, Natasha press the nineteenth floor.

Maria realizes this might be worse than just getting fired and she unrolls her sleeves, buttoning them up, wearing her jacket and re-doing her tie.

“Wait here,” Natasha orders once they reach the desk outside Stark's office, and Maria is left to a staring contest with the man who threw her to the wolves the first time she was up there.

“Don't be sad you only lasted one month,” he tells her. “A lot of people in your position last less. It's a hard job and it's a hard software to understand.”

Maria wishes it was, so she wouldn't have had the spare time to go and look for trouble.

“Yeah,” it's all Maria says.

It's been five minutes, it feels like ten years, when the door opens again. Natasha gets out and walks to another room at the opposite end of the hallway, coming back a moment later with a small box that Maria is sure she will be briefly asked to put her stuff into.

“Come in,” Natasha orders and Maria feels stupid now, for screwing up a job she was starting to actually like.

The room is quiet. Tony is staring at one of the veils in his hands, but he looks up when she walks in, frowning slightly.

“Nobody knows how to make these.” It's not a question.

“I know, sir. The blueprints got lost a while back.”

“Then how did you do this?”

“Well, sir, I made new blueprints. The only thing missing was the mimetic tech, but I realized it's just clocking tech but instead of transparent it has to project an image. It was a little hard to make it 3D, but eventually I managed.”

Tony keeps staring at her for a moment longer.

“You built these with spare materials.” Again, not a question.

“Yes, sir. I didn't steal anything, but I did use your software and your printer to make them.”

“You made them with two hours a day? It's just not possible.”

This is the thing that more than anything else will get her fired, but she has no idea how else to explain it, so she has to tell the truth.

“No, sir. I built the holowatches in a couple of hours. I didn't want the other manufacturers to get fired since I could do the job of all four of us alone, so I worked on this in my extra time. I know it was stupid and wrong and I understand that there's going to be consequences. I'm sorry, sir.”

Tony is still staring at her a little baffled. He looks at Natasha nodding to the other veils still on his desk and she walks up to it and puts them inside the box she's holding. She closes it up and tapes is sealed, then hands a sharpie to Maria.

“Puts Nick's address on it,” Tony orders. “And I'm keeping this one, the last version you made.”

“Yes, sir. Everything is in my computer, if you need the blueprints. I really am sorry, I'll clean my desk and be on my way.”

“You think I'm firing you?”

“Well, I do hope you're not having me arrested.”

Tony finally loses the baffled expression and laughs a little. “Natasha, there's an empty office in R&D, will you escort Maria there, please? No more secrets, Hill. No more illegal stuff. Well, no more illegal stuff I didn't order you to do. Everything you think about goes through me first, I check every idea, approve everything you want to design before you start working on it, I check every prototype. Are we clear?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Get out of my office before I fire you instead of promoting you.”

“Yes, sir.”

Maria walks out after Natasha, walking with her down to the seventh floor to pick up all her stuff, and then up to the eleventh, where there's a new office to wait for her. It's bigger and has actual walls instead of being a cubicle, and a door not made of plastic. The computer screen is flat on her desk, nestled into it, and it's a touchscreen. There is no small drawer under it, but there's a cabinet behind her desk with a lock and a table in the corner with a 3D printer.

Maria leaves her stuff in the cabinet and then follows Natasha out of the building, watching as she goes to mail the package in her hands. When Natasha starts walking back to the Stark Building Maria keeps following her.

“Your apartment is the other way.”

“I'm walking you back.”

“Why?”

“I don't know. Why are you avoiding your favorite bar?”

Natasha doesn't answer that. “I didn't know it was you. He should have said something. He told me he was sending someone else from his neighborhood who wanted to get away, he never said you were his kid.”

Maria feels that anger and sadness and bitterness again. “I didn't want to leave, he _sent_ me away. Everyone said he had a soft spot for me, but in the end he just got rid of me like I was just anyone else.”

“You don't really believe that, do you?”

Maria doesn't know what to believe anymore. She feels like everyone keeps turning their back on her and she just wants to stop relying on others, she wants to learn to only trust herself so she can stop losing the people she loves.

“Wait, he told you I was coming? Wait-” she stops in her tracks when it hits her. Natasha doesn't want to be her friend, or even a friendly coworker. She's been checking up on her because she has to. “Romanoff. You're R.”

“He didn't tell you?”

“Of course he didn't,” Maria laughs bitterly. “You don't have to check up on me. I'm fine by myself, so you can tell Fury to just fuck off. He can keep his secrets, but he needs to stop spying on me.”

It's bitter and unnecessary and she hasn't called Fury that in years, it's always Nick or “the old man”, but it comes out harsh, like she's through with his secrecy and the way he deceives her. She's not a kid anymore, she's all grown up. And she's tired of being treated like she can't handle herself.

“I don't work for him. I'm not spying on you. I was just making sure you moving here went smoothly, once you were settled my job was over.”

“When I was settled? I moved weeks ago.”

“Yeah, and all this time I thought you were struggling. You're all settled now, so I can stop keeping an eye on you.”

“Great.”

Maria turns away and starts walking to her own condo. When she turns around, a few seconds later, Natasha's back is turned on her. She tries not to care, but finds it harder than it should be.

  
  


Research and Development is different. There's no task, no easy way out. There's a problem and someone has to find a solution. In fact, there are a whole bunch of problems, written on a board on the wall a few feet from the elevator. Apparently, Tony needs those problems to be solved. And, apparently, they're all unconnected.

“Pick one and work on it. If you ever solve it, you can delete it off the board. Don't pick the first three, they've been there for at least half a year, there's no way around any of them,” her new boss tells her her first day in a bored, monotone voice.

So, of course, Maria picks the first problem on the board, the one that has been there, unsolved, the longest.

_How to regulate strength applied when using a metal arm_

She wonders how many types of sensors they've tried and looks for a file on the project. Once she finds it, she learns that they tried pretty much any and every sensor they could think of, but the metal arm keeps strangling every can it tries to open.

Then, she sees the arm is attached to a person already, it's not just theory. Her first thought is that it must be wired into the man's nerves.

“It's cause of the weight,” is her second thought. If the arm is too heavy, the strength used to lift it will be applied into every movement, preventing a more refined usage of the limb. She digs up the blueprints and it looks like there's a chance that might be the problem.

She works on it all day, every day, for the rest of the week, and makes a new prototype for a lighter arm. She thinks it's going to work, but the only way to know for sure is building it and then testing it on the man who's currently crushing every can of soda he tries to open.

She goes to her boss and asks to built a new prototype, not saying what for.

“Every prototype must be approved by Stark, unless it's a theoretical problem you're fixing.”

Maria wishes she had picked a theoretical problem, indeed. “Do I have to go upstair and ask him?”

“Want me to do it for you?”

“Would you?”

“No! I'm your fucking boss Hill, go do your own job!”

Maria should have seen that answer coming. She goes upstairs and asks the man outside Stark's office to announce her, because Maria Hill never makes the same mistake twice.

“What are you doing back in my office, it's been barely a week,” it's the first thing he says when she walks in.

“I need you to approve a new prototype,” she says. “It's a metal arm. It's lighter and has different types of sensors, multiple ones across the nerves path. I thought if it was lighter the strength to lift it wouldn't transmit into the prehensile motion, but then I realized it needs to have all the nerves reconstructed too, so he can grab things only using two fingers and if he has the tactile sensation it might help him dose his force.”

“No, we tried that. It's too heavy to reconstruct everything.”

“Yes, that's the problem. If something cuts through the external metal, it's going to cut through the internal metal as well. So once the shell is gone, the arm is going to get destroyed no matter what, right? So everything on the inside can be made of lighter materials, like plastic, if we made the shell indestructible.”

The solution is so simple he can't believe this didn't occur to him months ago.

He opens his mouth, then closes it again. “They've been working on this for a year. You've had, what, a week? And you thought about it and designed it?”

“Beginner's luck, sir.”

His eyes narrow. “Just go. Go make it, hurry up. Call me when you're done.”

Maria nods and leaves, smiling to herself.

  
  


That Friday she goes back to the bar Natasha likes and finally sees her sitting at the table in the corner, her glass almost empty. She goes up to the counter and orders a white Russian and an Americano, then joins her without a word.

They don't apologize. Natasha looks at her and accepts the drink, their glass click, and they drink in silence.

“Steve loves this place.”

“I never saw him here.”

“He stopped coming when you started. Didn't want you to not have a place just because you're avoiding him.”

Maria wants to grimace at those words.

“Well, tell him it was his bar first. And I'm not avoiding him anymore.”

“How did he make you feel?”

“What?”

“You said you miss how you felt when you had him.”

Maria doesn't want to answer, but a part of her feels she'll lose Natasha for good if she doesn't. She shouldn't want not to lose her, she shouldn't care.

“I felt like he would have my back no matter how badly I fucked up. I felt he'd be there no matter what. He was like a brother to me.”

Natasha doesn't answer immediately and Maria is afraid she might have said something wrong.

“Yeah,” she eventually says, “I get what you mean. He has a tendency to make people feel like that.”

They finish their drinks in silence, they nod to each other at the front door and go their separate ways. And Maria realizes that she might be starting to actually like New York.

  
  


As asked, she calls Stark as soon as the arm is ready and is told to bring it up to the sixteenth floor. She needs a pass to get there, so Natasha has to escort her. She didn't even know there were closed floors before that moment, and she has the feeling she's about to see something that should never be mentioned outside that building.

She knows before the war metal arms were... well, not _common_ , but they were manageable. But like with many other things, the knowledge got lost. Maria wonders what else was inside that floor that the rest of the world deems lost and is actually being re-built. Her imagination starts to go wild and she's about to ask Natasha about it, when they walk inside the room and she stops dead in her tracks.

There's the man with the metal arm and two doctors. Natasha tells her to walk in, but Maria can't go in there.

Bucky Barnes was the first kid she met once she got into the east side. She was sitting outside Fury's when a kid passed by and stopped, asking her if she was new. He sat beside her and told her she was going to fit right in with him and his friends, he talked when Maria didn't know what to say, he never asked something she didn't want to answer and he never questioned anything she did or said. Bucky Barnes was in an accident when she was fifteen and his left arm was cut right off, and she never saw him again. She heard from some neighbors his parents took him to Canada to have it fixed, but Maria had seen him briefly, after the accident, and there was nothing left to fix.

“Maria,” Natasha whispers, and that's when Bucky looks up and sees her.

It's like she's switched back on. Suddenly, she's moving and giving instructions and helping the doctors as they take away the old arm and install the new one, she works without looking up despite Bucky staring at her the whole time.

Once she's done, she finally takes a step back and grabs a can of soda out of the few she brought up, holding it in front of him.

He slowly, gently, raises his arm and grabs it out of her hand.

“Thank you.”

Maria nods. “You're welcome.”

Bucky Barnes was in an accident when Maria was fifteen. He doesn't remember anything that happened to him before that day. He doesn't remember Maria, or how he changed her life. But Maria hopes, maybe, she's finally found a way to repay him.

“I'm Bucky.”

“I'm Maria. Nice to meet you.”

“Thank you,” he says once more.

And Maria finally feels like a fixer again.

  
  


She's at the bar, that night.

Natasha's nursing her drink beside her and Maria's a little startled when her voice break the silence.

“You and him- he meant something to you.”

Maria feels the urge to say that it's not like that. But she bites her tongue and tells herself Natasha's being polite, trying to make small talk about ex-boyfriends, trying to be friends.

“He was the first friend I ever made. I wish I was with him that day. I wish I could've-” she doesn't know what she's about to say. Save him. Help him. Truth is, she couldn't have even if she had been there, since she couldn't have really avoided his amnesia even if she had been, but an intimate admission is still on the tip of her tongue before she can stop it.

The doors open loudly before she can say anything else, and Steve walks in and looks around until his eyes lands on her. He marches up to her and almost lifts her up out of her seat by her jacket, before hugging her closely to his chest.

“Thank you,” he says. “He hasn't been this happy since before the accident.”

“I didn't know it was for him. I was just doing my job,” she denies credit, but when Steve doesn't let her go she finally hugs him back. “I wish he knew-”

“He knows. He might not remember everything, but he knew you meant something to him when you walked into the room.”

Maria hugs him tighter, then lets him go. “Sit down. I'm buying you a drink.”

She spends the rest of the night making fun of him for ordering an appletini.

  
  


New York's winter is cold. Not as cold as Chicago's, but she needs a new coat that goes with her outfits and Mrs Giuliani is happy to help her out like she did a few times before, when she tore a shirt or stained a tie. Between that and the few things she bought for the apartment, her savings are almost gone. She sends most of it to Fury anyway, she's not sure he's spending it, but she does send it either way.

She's not really talking to him at all. She dials the number most weekends but ends up always calling Coulson instead, asking how things are and listening to his lies when he says that everything's fine. Sharon left too, after the summer heat started wearing out, her parents sent some money and she left to travel the U.S., Coulson doesn't know where she is and Maria doesn't mention she gets a postcard every now and then.

She hangs out at the bar more and more, Steve and Sam slip back into her life and into an easy friendship again, and it's like they never left. Even Bucky seems the same teenager she used to know when he laughs, and the only difference is he always wears long sleeves and gloves in public now. Natasha hangs out with them and it's nice to finally not be the only girl anymore.

Nobody really knows them around there, so they keep quiet and they keep to themselves, trying to avoid trouble at all costs, as out of character for them as that is.

It's a November evening, her third month in town, when trouble finally finds her.

She's walking home late and it's freezing, and she knows it's going to start raining soon, so she has to get home quickly. The rain isn't the same after the war, which is fair, since everything else has changed too. Maria doesn't know, doesn't want to imagine, what kind of bombs made the sky turn into an enemy, but the forecasting alerts them via holo's when it's going to be a green rain. It cuts through skin like glass.

She's checking the time on her watch when she sees them, in a dark alley a block from her place. A woman and a little girl. She doesn't hesitate for more than two seconds, before walking down the street.

“What are you doing here? It's going to start raining soon, you need to get inside.”

There's stuff around them and the little girl has a backpack. The woman looks up at her with fear in her eyes, but doesn't move. Maria has never felt so angry in her life, it's a rich neighborhood, why is there a woman on a street and nobody's helping her?

“Come on,” she says. “Let's go.”

“All our stuff's here.”

“I'll help you. Hurry up,” Maria says and helps the woman put the few things scattered around inside a bag, then picks up the little girl along with her backpack as the woman carries their bags.

They walk fast and run for the last half block and inside a fast food open 24/7. The door closes as the rain starts outside and Maria sighs in relief as she puts the little girl back down on the ground. The woman won't stop thanking her for warning them and Maria leads them to a table and tells them to wait. She buys them food and warm drinks and sits across from them as they eat, the girl serving them is nice enough and whispers to Maria they can stay all night, that her boss isn't coming in before ten the next morning.

The woman tells Maria how she sold her holowatch to pay for rent, it bought them time but they lost the house eventually and now they have nowhere to go and no holowatch to point them to safe places or warn them about the rain. Maria has heard this story a hundred times before.

There's going to be a ten minutes break in the storm soon and she buys them more food and tells them to eat it if the manager comes in and to refuse to be kicked out. She has to get home and make sure her friends are okay, so she tells the woman. The truth is Maria can't stand being there and not being able to do something.

The little girl hugs her and thanks her for carrying her, she can't be older than five and Maria feels useless, she wants to tear her own watch off and give it to the woman, but it has her prints saved and the moment she takes it off it's going to be as good as garbage.

Maria waits until the rain stops and hurries home avoiding the puddles on the ground carefully. She hadn't been out on a green night in years, the air smells different and it's darker than usual, nobody is around.

It's the first time New York is quiet.

She gets home and changes out of her clothes and notices her new coat has a new hole on the shoulder. At least her suit isn't ruined and her shoes seem perfectly intact. She puts on sweat pants and a shirt and grabs her keys, then heads for the elevator.

She knocks on the 303 and feels jittery and still angry. She needs to yell at someone about how unfair it is that Stark is rich and doesn't help people living on the streets, she wonders how many more are out there while they have three rooms apartments and Stark has a whole building with his name on it. But then the door opens and Maria's anger turns into something else.

Steve is wearing shorts with no shirt on, he's breathing hard. There's a woman in a sport bra and leggings behind him and Maria doesn't have to wait for her to turn, because the moment she sees red hair she's a hundred percent sure who she is.

“Sorry,” she mutters and almost trips on air when she turns and leaves. She sees the elevator is on the ground floor and she hears Steve calling her name, so instead of stopping and pressing the elevator button she goes left and walks up the stairs two at a time. She doesn't know why seeing that burned more than the acid rain.

  
  


When they were fourteen years old Steve fell in love with Cassy Johnson, so they spent their afternoons down on Hemlock Street hoping she'd notice him soon enough.

Cassy started hanging out around them and they thought she liked Sam best at first, because all of her attention went to him. But then Bucky told them it was what girls did, that if she talked to Sam then there was a good chance she liked him as a friend but was too shy to talk to Steve. So they started thinking she was into Steve, until one day they went to the shore together and the boys started playing in the shallow waters and Cassy Johnson sat beside her on the sand and took Maria's hand without looking at her.

Maria thought maybe girls did that with their friends, she always hanged around boys anyway so how was she supposed to know. She didn't want to be rude, so she left her hand there and Cassy said goodbye to her with a kiss when the boys weren't looking.

Steve wouldn't stop talking about her the whole way home and Maria felt worse and worse with every step. She never set foot in Hemlock Street again, because it didn't matter if she liked Cassy back, Steve liked her too and that was it for her.

They had always had the same taste in girls, is the first thing Maria thinks after seeing Natasha half naked in his apartment. And that's when she realizes she might like Natasha, too. It's too late. Now she knows Steve likes her and that's it for her once again.

It's half an hour later when someone knocks on her door and she sees Sam with some beers in his hands. She lets him in without saying anything and he walks to the couch and waits for Maria to join him.

“I herd noises in the hallway, when I walked out he told me something was wrong with you. I put two and two together when I saw who was there and I know why you ran off.”

“Shut up and give me a beer.”

“You know,” he says sipping on his cold drink, “I knew Cassy liked you. She asked me if you might be into her, that's why we were so close.”

“Shut up, Sammy.”

He hates to be called that. Maria knows it too well and takes advantage of it sometimes.

“I thought you liked her, I had to cheer her up when she cried 'cause you didn't kiss her back. I got why you didn't a week later, when Steve bought the last slice of your favorite pizza at Gianni's and you let him.”

“Shut up.”

Maria already knows all of this. She doesn't want to listen to it be said out loud.

“He's not that kid anymore. Bucky stopped coddling him because he forgot he had to, amnesia and all that. You need to find a way to forget about it, too. You don't need to protect him from everything anymore.”

She opens one of the beers for herself and drinks half of it on her first sip.

“Shut up,” she says again and Sam finally does.

  
  


She avoids the bar for the weekend and doesn't take breaks from work on Monday. For the first time since starting there she stops working at five on the clock and takes the elevator up to Mr Stark's office and asks to see him.

When she's let in Natasha is sitting on his couch and she feels the urge to run away again.

“I can come back later.”

“Anything you say to me you can say to Natasha,” Stark smiles like he's trying to reassure her.

Maria bites her tongue and clears her voice. “I need a new holowatch.”

“Is yours broken?”

She tugs her sleeve down slightly but Stark can clearly see it's still there. “Yeah.”

“Hill.”

“I can pay for the parts and build it out of my work hours,” she says.

“What do you need it for?” Stark asks again when she avoids the question.

Maria knows he won't give in if she lies. “There's a woman, sleeping in one of the alleys between here and my place. She almost got caught in the rain Friday, I had to run carrying her kid until we made it to the fast food three blocks down. She doesn't have an holo's and I might not be there next time.”

Stark clicks his tongue and leans on his desk, thinking about what she's asking.

“There are quite a few people sleeping on the streets in this neighborhood,” it's ridiculous to Maria he doesn't understand that his words only enrage her more, the fact that he's aware of that only makes her angrier. “Why her, why not everyone else?”

Maria thinks about it for all of two seconds, then she tugs her sleeve up and checks something on her phone. “I need seven holo's, sir. That's how many parts I can probably pay for.”

“You can't save them all.”

“You could,” Maria is quick to say. “But you aren't. I'm not stupid, I know there's something bigger going on here, I know Fury worked small scale and you're working on something else, but his methods worked. Someone is going to see Bucky's arms eventually, but they won't talk if you're keeping the neighborhood afloat. They will if they have nothing to lose. Mrs Giuliani's shop screen has been broken for ten days and she doesn't have the money for a new one. When HYDRA comes and says she has to give up informations about your employees or closes shop, what do you think she'll do? She never even saw your face, she has a son and two nephews and she's the only one in her family with a job.”

“I don't have time to worry about-”

“That's why I'm here. I can take care of it for you. I can pay for some parts and deliver the watches and try to make them understand you're here and you're on their side. I know you're working on something bigger. They need to know, too. You need to have people who are willing to risk everything to protect you. You don't get them by doing nothing when people starve in your streets. And these _are_ your streets.”

Tony sighs, thinks about it as he starts pacing. “We've been having some trouble keeping things under wraps, recently. Me and Natasha were talking about implementing security, but that won't do much good. We can try your method. I'll pay for everything, the screen, the watches, you just need to take care of delivery, 'cause I don't think anyone here knows how that's done.”

Maria lets out a breath she didn't know she was holding and nods.

“I can start tonight.”

Tony turns to Natasha. “Show her Storage. Floors nine and ten, you'll find everything you need there. Natasha is going to approve of everything you deliver and she's coming with you. I want you two to report back at me at the end of the week. Don't take more than five.”

“Yes, sir.”

Maria hesitates, she wants to protest, to say she can do it alone. But she doesn't want to risk not doing it at all, so she ends up nodding instead. “Yes, sir.”

Natasha takes her to the ninth floor and lets her pick out a watch, of course Maria chooses one of her own, the tag with her name still attached to it. The elevator brings them back down to the ground floor and Maria stops just outside, talking for the first time since they were left alone.

“I'll wait for you here.”

Natasha frowns. “What are you talking about?”

Maria gestures at her. “You didn't think you were coming out there like this, did you? We need to change. Blend in.”

It's hard to imagine Natasha, a woman born to stand out, blending in.

“Don't you have jeans? Maybe a leather jacket?”

Natasha is still not moving.

“You can't come like this. Either you change or I go alone. I'll go change and you decide,” she doesn't wait for an answer, instead she walks out of the building and heads straight for her own apartment.

She puts on old jeans with holes in the cuffs and her backpack, putting inside the holowatch, some of her old tools, and a leather jacket just in case Natasha hasn't listened to her. She's about to leave when she decides it can't hurt to have it with her and grabs the electric-gun she brought from home and stuffs it in her pocket.

When she makes the conscious decision to wear her favorite hoodie is half nostalgia and half spite because Natasha told her not to ever wear it again and the image of her sweaty and half naked figure inside Steve's apartment is still always running in the back of her mind.

She puts the hood up and wears the backpack and walks fast to the Stark Building with her head down. Natasha's waiting for her with her chin down and at least not obviously looking around waiting for someone. So maybe they can survive the night.

Natasha eyes the hoodie warily, but doesn't say anything. Maria gestures with her head for Natasha to follow and walks to the alley she visited a few nights before. It's insane how easily she slips back into a life she thought she would never get to have again.

The woman's there with the little girl, who hugs her as soon as she recognizes her. Maria hugs her back, then kneels down beside the woman. Natasha stands up two feet from them, looking alternatively between them and the main street to make sure nobody's coming their way.

“Give me your left hand,” Maria instructs. “This is fourth gen,” she puts the watch on the woman's wrist, then gestures for her to extend the other hand, “you need to turn it on with your fingerprint. Here,” she helps her get it right, then uses a screw driver to tighten it to the right point so she doesn't lose it. “Never take it off, never sell it. Don't let anyone see you have it.”

Maria shows her how to look at the forecasting and how to look for safe places to sleep into and everything else she might need. Time goes quickly, she remembers the speech by heart, she's given it at least a hundred times before.

When she finally finishes, the woman grabs her arm.

“Who are you?”

Maria doesn't say anything, she doesn't know what she would even say to that, so she puts her hand on top of the woman's on her own arm. “I'm Maria. Whatever you need, come to me. Mr Stark just wants to help.”

The woman nods and doesn't tell her Mr Stark has been around for a while and has never wanted to help before. “Thank you. Thank you,” she nods to Natasha as well.

They get up and walk away, Maria waves at the little girl and then walks out of sight, feeling like she's finally back to being herself. Except, now, she's not Fury's kid anymore. She's just Maria.

She looks at the streets unfolding in front of them an there's a park so far away she can barely make it out. She knows that's where they need to go, but she also knows they can't cover it all by foot and they can't meet people if they go by car. It's going to be a lot of work and she knows it's not something that will get down with low effort, but she doesn't waver.

“We're gonna need bikes tomorrow,” is all she says, and then she starts walking in the opposite direction, leaving the park for another night and scouting some of their blocks instead.

They don't talk to anyone else, Maria just counts. She walks Natasha back to the Stark Building and says that they'll need bikes and three more watches, then puts her hood back up and starts walking away without waiting for an answer.

Surely enough, the next evening, after she goes back home and changes out of her work clothes, Natasha is waiting for her outside her building with two bicycles and a small bag. Maria hurriedly makes her put the bag inside the backpack she's carrying, then chooses one of the bikes. They make the deliveries first, to the few people Maria counted the previous night when they headed west, then they go to the park on the east.

The park seem empty, until they find some boxes under one of the benches next to the small pond and Maria counts there's at least three more people hanging around there.

“Well, we're going to need more watches.”

And that's that. No complaining, no bored comments, nothing. She sees there's more people, ask for more watches, and Natasha nods.

“Next week. We can't do it all at once.”

“Just the park, we'd be at seven, it's only two more than Stark agreed on. Just the park,” Maria says and Natasha hums and pretends to think about it while already thinking when they can deliver the rest.

“Okay. Just the park.”

On Friday, when they report to Stark, he asks them to help Mrs Giuliani with her screen over the weekend and tells them he's going to give them a raise for working outside of the office hours. Maria doesn't care about the raise, but immediately lists the things she'll need to fix the screen while the shop is closed on Sunday.

  
  


 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just like to have them choose each other's clothes okay? Anyway, hope you enjoyed, if you want to I'd be ecstatic to know what you thought about this!


	4. I can't help falling in love with you

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: sex scenes (non-graphic)

Maria gets moved up again, to the fifteenth floor, with the people who handle management. They do import, export, and something on the sixteenth and seventeenth floor she's not allowed to know anything about – in fact, nobody knows anything about it and it's pass-only.

She starts making the rounds with Natasha on the blocks between the SI building and her condo, helping the shop owners there to make them see Stark differently. They're slowly expanding their reach, but it takes time.

Her office is bigger, there's a couch on the side and a small cabinet on the corner with a few bottles inside and a music box on top of it. They're back from the round one night, the building is empty, at least the floors with the offices, Maria puts the backpack with her tools and the holowatches they haven't placed yet inside her cabinet and locks it, then turns on the music and picks a song from her w-phone. As it starts playing through the room she falls on the couch with a sigh, it's been a tiring week and her hoodie smells like dirt and sweat. She looks up after running a hand through her hair and Natasha is looking at her from the threshold, closing the door slowly and with a soft thud.

Natasha is staring and Maria thinks it's because of the damn hoodie she believes Natasha hates.

“I didn't sleep with him.”

“It's none of my business.”

“I don't sleep with my bosses, I got here 'cause I'm good at my job.”

Maria realizes she's not talking about Steve, she's talking about Stark. “I know.”

“And you're not my boss. I'm head of security and you're management.”

Maria raises an eyebrow at her, because technically Natasha is in HR and Maria's in trading. They don't say their real jobs out loud.

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because I want you to be clear about why I'm doing this,” Natasha says as she locks the door and Maria's heart speeds up as she sits up straighter.

She's not stupid enough to ask Natasha what it _is_ that she's doing, because she doesn't want to risk making her change her mind, so instead she asks “Why _are_ you doing this?”

Natasha walks to the couch slowly, like every step has to be a conscious decision, like she's giving Maria time to react or get up and get out, but Maria doesn't move. Natasha kneels in front of her with a grace Maria never thought could exist, her hands are firm when she grabs her jeans and unbuttons them, bringing the zip down slowly.

“Because I want to.”

And yeah, yes, it makes sense, since Maria doesn't think there is one single person in the world that could make Natasha do something she doesn't want to. But it's still a heavy thing to say to someone like Maria, who's always felt like the second or third choice. It implies Natasha didn't want to sleep with Stark but she wants to sleep with her, she wants _her_. Maria doesn't know how to deal with that so she puts that information aside and tries to focus on what Natasha is doing instead of what Natasha is saying.

She lifts her hips when Natasha tugs her jeans down and complies immediately when Natasha pushes her knees apart.

Natasha doesn't waste any time, they're in an office and it's late and there's a million things that could go wrong, but Maria has already forgot the better part of them by the time Natasha's lips reach her.

She has to grab the leather of the couch with one hand so she's not holding Natasha's hair to tight with the other, and tries to move as little as possible. She's afraid one sudden movement or a noise too loud might end it, so she bites her lower lip and breaths out only when she can't hold it in anymore.

It starts fast, but Natasha slows down at some point, when she learns that there's a spot that makes Maria quiver and another one that makes her moan out loud. She's holding Maria's hips with her hands and scratches them when Maria's hand tighten in her hair and Maria's entire body goes rigid before she melts.

She's still panting lightly when she opens her eyes and Natasha is fixing her own clothes and hair, like she's about to leave. Maria sits up and grabs her hand, tugging slightly.

“Come here,” she says with a softer tone that she intended to use.

Natasha turns to her like she's about to make an excuse, but Maria's blue eyes are staring up at her and suddenly she feels like there's nothing she can do but comply. Maria guides her until she's straddling her and Natasha ends up being taller, for once, so that when Maria looks up, her hands already unzipping Natasha's jeans, she can just bend down a little to kiss her lips. Maria kisses her back, tilting her chin up, while Natasha steadies herself with a hand around her shoulders and the other grabbing her hair.

Maria hugs her around the waist with her left arm, while her right hand finds its way into Natasha's jeans. She regrets not taking them off when the zip starts scratching the back of her hand, but it's too late and she's not stopping for any reason in the world other than Natasha asking her to.

When Natasha gasps and breaks the kiss, Maria bites her neck lightly and kisses her collarbone a few times. Natasha holds her tighter and keeps Maria's lips on her own neck, as she starts to move more frantically.

There's a split second Maria wonders what in the world she did right, why tonight, why like this, but she realizes those are all answers she doesn't really need the exact second Natasha's forehead leans on her own and their eyes meet.

She tries to memorize the way Natasha's looking at her or how tightly she's holding onto her, the way she trembles or how her thighs shake, the soft kiss they share right before Natasha gets up.

They fix their clothes without talking and Natasha turns to her before walking out and there's a smirk on her lips as she walks to Maria. She holds her chin up with one hand and fixes her messy hair with the other, and Maria could swear there's a satisfied sparkle in her eyes at the thought that she was the one who did that.

Natasha walks out and away, and she's careful to never touch Maria again after that night.

She's extra careful when they exchange glasses or when she passes holowatches or notes or anything else to her. Natasha doesn't even graze her by mistake anymore and it drives Maria insane. She sometimes still feels on her skin that hand holding her shoulder so tight it almost hurt or the softness of that last kiss and she doesn't understand why Natasha won't even look at her when they're around their friends.

It drives Maria on the verge of insanity, but she never mentions it, never tells anyone what happened, doesn't lets herself hope it might ever happen again.

It's a week of silence and cold shoulder and Maria feels there's something wrong between them, maybe something she did, maybe something she said.

It's the next Thursday, when she comes home from work and Natasha's standing outside her door, leaning on the wall. Maria lets her in, without a snarky comment or a pissed off look. She lets her in, closes the door and waits for an explanation that never comes.

Natasha kisses her like they've done this a dozen times, and backs Maria into the bedroom and onto the bed, taking off her jacket and letting it fall on the floor. After that, she discards her own shirt too, and grabs Maria's coat, pulling her closer than she already is. Maria breaks the kiss and leans back, falling on her elbows and watching Natasha for a moment. She's breathing heavy and her torso's naked except for her bra, she's straddling Maria and her hands are still grabbing the collar of her coat.

Even as she's trying to push Maria's coat off her shoulders, she hasn't made eye contact for more than two seconds at a time. Maria stills her hands and waits until Natasha finally looks down at her with a raised eyebrow.

“I just got a TV installed. We could order some pizza, watch a movie.”

Natasha frowns and smacks her shoulder. “I'm half naked on top of you, and you want to go watch television? What the hell, Maria.”

“You don't look like you wanna do this. So yeah, we can watch a movie. Talk, maybe. Whatever you want,” she says and her thumb traces the line of Natasha's ribs softly, her hand still on Natasha's waist.

“What makes you think I don't want to do this, I came here, didn't I?”

“You've been avoiding me for almost a week, you've stopped touching me and now you can't even look at me,” to prove her last point, she has to duck her head to catch Natasha's eyes.

Natasha finally holds her gaze for more than a few seconds, then smacks her on the shoulder again, harder than the first time.

“I don't want people to know. And I don't know how to touch you without what happened showing all over my face. I'm a spy and it's so stupid that I can't keep this one secret.”

“You're a _spy_?”

“Shut up. Don't play dumb with me. You know I am, Fury is, _you_ are. We're the resistance, what else do you wanna call us?” Natasha tugs her coat again, this time pulling towards her, and Maria sits straighter, closer. “I don't know how to look at you. I'm not used to this, to being this close to someone. I'll need time. To get used to it.”

Maria is about to say something stupid, a joke about Steve or Stark, but she stops herself just in time and nods, instead. “We're in no rush. I just wanted to make sure you didn't regret anything.”

“You know, for a genius, you can be really dumb sometimes.”

Maria smiles a little. “I've been told that. Do you want pizza?”

“No,” Natasha breathes less than an inch away from her lips.

She's suddenly serious again, and Maria senses she's surer, more relaxed, but more impatient.

“What do you want, then?” Maria teases her.

“I want you to go down on me.”

She doesn't need to be told twice. She flips them over and gets Natasha's jeans off of her in less then ten seconds. And they're not in an office, there's no rush there. So she takes off her own coat and jacket and then starts kissing down Natasha's neck, across her collarbone, down her chest. She takes off her bra as Natasha pulls her tie lose and starts to unbutton her shirt, her hands eventually faltering and going to grab at her hair and back once Maria starts paying attention to her breasts. She traces every small scar she can find with her tongue, kisses up Natasha's thighs, bites and sucks the flesh of her inner thighs until the hand in her hair becomes too insistent. With shaking hands, she slips down Natasha's underwear slowly.

Maria has only done this once before and she keeps having the feeling she's doing everything wrong, but it's not enough to make her stop.

It takes her a minute to find the right tempo and she regrets not putting a song on or something else to quiet down the voice in her head telling her she's messing it up. Maybe this is why nineteen years-old don't sleep with goddesses.

She hears Natasha moan and sigh and she takes it as a good sign that she's doing pretty okay. She has one hand on Natasha's belly and she can feel her muscles clench every time she rolls her hips into Maria's mouth. Her other hand is scratching Natasha's right thigh lightly, until Natasha reaches for it and squeezes it into her own. Natasha's other hand is in her hair, keeping her close, despite Maria's non-existent intention of moving away.

If in her office Natasha trembled silently, this is the opposite. She lets out a long moan and her body goes completely still. A moment after she lets go of Maria's hair to clutch the sheets beside her and Maria slows down only when she feels Natasha's thighs stop trembling.

She flips over and lays beside Natasha, trying desperately to catch her breath and not look like she just had a semi-mystical experience feeling Natasha come undone beneath her.

Natasha's hand is on her stomach as soon as her breathing is back to normal, and she's tugging her shirt out of her pants. Maria unbuttons her own shirt as Natasha deals with her pants and between the two of them she's naked in less than a minute. That's when Natasha stops and looks at her. And Maria realizes nobody ever took the time to look at her like that.

Natasha crawls on top of her and kisses her deeply and it's enough to make every thought in Maria's brain disappear. All her insecurities and doubts, everything's suddenly gone. And all that's left is the way Natasha's kissing her and the way Natasha's skin feels against her own and the way Natasha makes her feel. All that's left is just Natasha.

  
  


Maria's been in New York for barely six months and Christmas passed by without a visit or a call from Fury. He called on New Year's Eve, telling her he's had enough of the silent treatment and she needs to yell at him if she's pissed. Maria doesn't feel angry anymore, so she wishes him a Happy New Year and waits in line until he starts talking again to fill the silence she doesn't know how to spend.

Phil calls to tell her they're doing better and they've found two new kids that have been working magic on their side of town. She knows Sharon's back somewhere on the East Coast, but she hasn't heard from her in a while.

Her whole world has kept on turning after she left, to no surprise at all.

  
  


Stark throws a party for Pepper's birthday, in February, and Natasha tells her to wear the formal tuxedo they bought from Mrs Giuliani. Maria does even though she knows Natasha won't even glance her way the whole night, despite the fact that this thing between them as been going on for the past three months.

She hopes, at least, she won't have to watch her dance with Steve all night, because he's been going on and on about this girl he wants them to meet. Natasha doesn't let Maria in her apartment, because it's in Stark's Building, and people are always watching and gossiping, so she goes to Maria's and helps her fix her red bowtie before going to get ready herself.

Maria's hopes slowly disappear when she gets there with Sam and Bucky and sees Natasha already dancing with Steve somewhere in the crowd.

She tries not to care and they head for the bar, since the champagne's free. She's halfway through her glass when she catches something out of the corner of her eye and she turns to the floor's entrance. Sharon walks in and scans the room with her eyes and, as hers catch Maria's, there's surprise in her expression but she smiles and, despite Maria not being the one she was looking for, she makes a beeline for her immediately.

“Good evening,” she says politely to the three of them and Sam and Bucky smile at her.

“Hi,” Maria says and can't take her eyes off of the blonde.

“You look different.”

“You look- well, you look gorgeous.”

Maria has a soft spot for this girl. She was...well, not her first love exactly, but something close enough that earned her a permanent place in her heart. She doesn't feel that way about Sharon anymore, but they were friends before anything else and things ended on good terms between them, and that's enough to make them fond of each other in a way that can't ever properly fade.

“Well, aren't you going to ask me to dance?”

Maria empties her glass in a long sip and places it on the bar counter, before holding out her hand for Sharon to take.

“Would you like to dance?”

Sharon smiles and lets Maria lead her to the dance floor. They're both good enough for it to be easy, so they can talk while they swirl across the room.

“I didn't know you were in New York. Nick said you went off the grid, he was the one forwarding you the postcards.”

“Nick said a great many things,” Maria scoffs. “When did you arrive here?”

“About a month ago. I might be staying for a while,” she hesitates. “I met someone, actually. This lad from Brooklyn.”

“That's good. Maybe it's time for you to put some roots again.”

Sharon leans her chin on Maria's shoulder. “I've tried that once before. Ended before it started.”

Maria hugs her a little closer and then leans back to look into her eyes.

“We were too young.”

“It was less than a year ago.”

“Yeah, eight months or so. But we grew up fast, didn't we?” Maria thinks about Phil getting beaten up in that alley and how she built guns for herself to be able to feel safe again.

“We did,” Sharon moves her hair back slightly. It's shorter than it was, neater. “It looks nice. You look nice.”

“Yours is longer. I like it like this.”

Sharon smiles, then goes serious for a second. “Maria, there's something I-”

“May I cut in?” the man's voice is slightly bitter and Maria's hand moves away from Sharon's waist immediately, almost like it got burned. She puts some space between them and turns around only to see Steve standing there. His eyes soften with surprise and he frowns. “Maria?”

“You two know each other?” Sharon asks. “Wait. You're not _her_ Steve, right? The one who moved away? You said you were from Brooklyn.”

Steve is immediately left to wonder how Sharon knows Maria has a friend named Steve who moved away. That sentence alone betrays some sort of acquaintance between the two women that couldn't have happened in the short time they danced.

“Oh,” it's all Maria can manage to say. _He's_ the lad from Brooklyn. “No, no. We work in the same building,” she forces out a smile. “I'll go grab a drink,” she excuses herself and walks away, her smile faltering, and heads for the balcony instead.

The air is cold and it helps her think.

“You and Steve really have the same taste in women,” Sam offers her a glass of champagne.

Maria looks at him and they suddenly both start laughing without really knowing why, when someone clears their throat behind them. They turn to see Natasha standing there in a red dress that sends Maria's head spinning.

“I'll go look for Bucky,” Sam nods and leaves, still smiling.

“The same taste in women?” Natasha asks, unamused.

Maria shakes her head and gestures for Natasha to follow her. They take an elevator up to her office and sit on the couch. Maria tells her about Cassy Johnson and Sharon and how Sam went to talk to her when she found out about her and Steve, she explains the jokes lightly, like it doesn't matter, but Natasha is still staring at her with a hard look.

“You're such an idiot.”

She gets up and heads for the door, but Maria grabs her hand and tries to stop her. It makes Natasha even madder.

“We were _training_. There was nothing between us, I thought you knew.”

“It was none of my business. Why are you mad?”

“So what, you thought I was just sleeping with your friend, but it didn't bother you?”

“What? No. No, it's not like that. I didn't know, I didn't ask 'cause I thought you liked him but when you made it clear you were into me I didn't- well, it didn't matter anymore.”

“It _did_ matter. All this time, you just thought you didn't mean anything to me. That you were just someone else I was sleeping with.”

“No, I never thought that,” Maria tries to stay calm despite Natasha's angry tone. She tugs the hand she's still holding and brings it up to her lip to kiss it gently. “I never thought I didn't mean anything to you.”

“How would you know. You never asked,” Natasha lightly pushes her with her free hand, but lets Maria kiss the other. “I _am_ your business.”

“You are,” Maria agrees and steps closer so she can hug Natasha around the waist. “You weren't then, Nat. I never thought you'd like me back in a million years. I couldn't say I was jealous, it would have been creepy. You almost stopped talking to me entirely after you found out I was Nick's kid. I thought you wanted nothing to do with me.”

“It wasn't like that. Fury, he helped me when I got here in the U.S., he got me out of a pretty bad situation. I didn't want to do something that might have pissed him off, like sleeping with his daughter.”

“What made you change your mind?” Maria asks.

“You're not Fury's kid, to me. You're your own person, you don't belong to him. So if he doesn't approve, that's his own problem.”

Maria looks down and picks a song from her w-phone that starts playing through the music box in the corner. It's an old song, from a hundred years ago.

“May I have this dance?” Maria asks. Natasha lightly pushes her again, not even hard enough to move her, but then nods. “This is the song that was playing the first time I ever saw you,” Maria tells her as they move slowly.

“Outside Stark's office?” Natasha frowns.

“No,” Maria chuckles. “No, the first time I saw you was years ago. I was sixteen and I was coming home from school one day, Phil was playing this in the bar and you were in Nick's upstairs office. I saw you through the open door, before he blocked my view to ask me to tell Phil to turn it off.”

“That was you? I never saw you.”

“It was me. I ran downstairs and hid until I knew for sure you were gone. I was too afraid you caught me staring.”

“I didn't.”

“It took me a while to remember where I had seen you before, but for some reason every time I saw you here at SI, this old song would start playing in my head. Eventually, I remembered.”

Natasha is silent for a long moment. “I was trained in Russia. The man who raised me forced me to get married when I turned eighteen. My husband- he was killed shortly after by that same man who forced me to marry him, and I escaped here when I was barely nineteen. That's why I was there. Fury helped me, gave me a new identity, a job here.”

Maria feels angry at the thought Natasha had to go through that. She hugs her closer, because she knows there's nothing she can say that would make things better.

“I didn't know you could dance,” Natasha tells her.

“You never asked.”

“We're not very good at communicating, are we?”

“No. But we're going to get better.”

She kisses Natasha's cheek and starts singing softly the lyrics of that old song as they keep dancing in the empty office.

  
  


Maria likes to think she isn't a naive person. She knows what Stark is doing, building an army. She also knows there need to be people for that army to fight for, and that's where she comes in.

The problem is, she gets recognized on the streets too. She becomes the other face of Stark Industries, the woman you go to for the other side of business. They're careful, Natasha is actually borderline paranoid, but it's good to be. They come close to being made a couple of times, but Natasha always knows when to stop and when to close a deal.

The neighborhood hasn't seen better days since the war. Natasha even held her hand in public once, under the table of their bar. It's progress, Maria convinces herself.

They're moving forward.

That is not to say they don't have setbacks. A major one is Sitwell. Maria knows his face, sees it everyday, but never properly knows who he is until he becomes a problem and Stark sends them to take care of it, because apparently they do that too, now. Steve is supposed to be their captain for this kind of things, but Natasha is the muscle, so Maria always ends up overseeing it, however small.

It's not small with Sitwell. They think he might be HYDRA. They think this might set them back weeks, months. They wonder how someone so unimportant, so small, can cause so much damage to something so huge.

Steve tries to reason with him, but he can't. Natasha is the one who tells him to leave. He's their Captain. But he could never give the order they need right now. She asks him to step back and Maria steps beside the chair Sitwell is sitting at, leans on the table.

“There was a public park in the neighborhood I grew up in,” she crosses her arms on her chest and stares at the wall ahead, while the man sitting looks up and turns his neck to look at her with disbelieving eyes. After Steve Rogers tries to change your core beliefs with his rhetoric a discussion about city parks is the last thing you would expect. “Lots of trees and flowers and this nice man took care of everything, I don't even think he was paid to do it, he just did. He loved sunflowers. Man, he was so fond of those. Don't get me wrong, he loved everything in that park, every single plant in there, but those were his favorites.”

Her lips turn up at the memories of a simpler time.

“One day, he saw that some of the sunflowers were dying, the stems were covered in something white and gross. Parasites. Those tiny little things were killing the flowers. He knew that some of the sunflowers that still appeared healthy were already infected but there was no way of knowing which ones. And if he let them there, it could spread to other flowers. He could save some of the sunflowers, sure, but at a risk. They were his favorites. But those little, pretty plants could ruin the entire park. Do you understand what I'm saying?”

He shrugs. “Something pretty can be dangerous?” He smirks up at Natasha, standing against the wall on the opposite side of the room.

“I guess that's also true,” she chuckles lightly. “I care very much about this place, and we're growing something special here. That man, he took out his favorite flowers so he wouldn't risk the rest of the garden. And you, well,” she pats him on the shoulder twice. “I barely even know your name. That man taught me, some of the things we build are bigger than any person who helps growing them.”

They still don't know if he's HYDRA, but they frame him for murder and let him rot in prison for the rest of his days.

  
  


Somehow, people seem to hear about Sitwell, about the Resistance, about them. More and more people ask to help and one day Fury himself shows up at SI with a team of recruits to help them fight back.

“You left your streets?” is the only thing Maria asks him after months of not seeing each other.

“Those weren't my streets anymore. Haven't been in a while.”

Maria nods. “There's a war coming. If you stay here-”

“I know.”

“You can't win a war with watches and phones. We'll use guns, weapons-”

“I know, Maria.”

“You can't fight a regime with words.”

He nods. It's all they have to say to each other. That they both knew Maria had been right back then and was right now. And just like that, they were back on the same side again.

  
  


The last time she visits the park, there are no people around, not that she's looking anymore. Everyone in the city is mostly set, they've been doing better and better. Things are ready, as much as they can be, and they're leaving at dawn for the first strike. From then on, is going to be running and hiding and fighting and Maria feels her whole life has been leading her to this.

She goes to her apartment and packs up the few things that actually belong to her, leaving behind anything belonging to Maria-from-trading. It all still fits in her old bag. The more things change and all of that, she supposes.

Natasha doesn't knock. She's just there for dinner like she usually is recently, and Maria never questions how she's getting in since she never gave her a key, she just lets her. She lets her come in and eat dinner and choose what to watch or which songs to play.

Maybe it's the only way she's ever learned how to love someone. Silently. Letting them in without admitting it and taking care of them even if they don't need it; God knows Fury didn't need her weapons when she made them and Natasha doesn't need someone to cook for her, but Maria still does, because she's never known how to say an “I love you” that isn't also a “Goodbye” and she's scared to death of having to leave Natasha, too.

“We should go on a road trip. When this is over.”

They're naked in bed, tangled in each other. Natasha's resting her head on Maria's shoulder and her fingertips are pressing softly against Maria's sternum like she's trying to find something that should be there.

“We don't have a car.”

“I do. Back home. We could go to Chicago, take it back from Fury's garage.”

She thinks it right as she's saying it: _if there's still a garage to go back to_. Neither of them voices the thought but they both know it's possible that the house – Fury's, Maria's home – has been trashed along with everything they left behind. The bar. The lab. The car. It's all probably long gone, it's a life they can't go back to. Not until this is over, not for a long while.

“Yeah. We should do that,” Natasha says instead.

Maria traces her spine with a finger and feels goosebumps form as she goes. _Liar_.

Maybe it's a solace that Natasha is lying to her. It's better to have hope, sometimes it doesn't matter if it's false. People fight harder when they have something worth fighting for. She sometimes wonders if that's all Natasha sees in this thing they have; a problem-solver that needs something worth discovering all the answers for.

“If I'm not here to see the end of it-”

She knows that she has to finish a sentence that starts like that, but her mind is suddenly completely blank.

“Where could you possibly go that I wouldn't follow?” Natasha asks and for a second Maria thinks she didn't understand. But there's something in her eyes, when Natasha pushes herself up on her elbow to look down into Maria's own, that tells her Natasha knew exactly what she meant.

“That's easy,” Maria smiles so the tears won't fall. “You could never follow me into the average. Into settling. Into a small suburban house with a white picket fence and two dogs and a cat, two ordinary jobs and a mortgage, a ring heavier than any weapon you've ever carried and a tiny human that means more than anything a war could win you. You wouldn't follow me there.”

For a second, Natasha looks like she wants to say something, like she wants to protest. Like she'll lie through her teeth just to give Maria all the hope she could possibly think of. She doesn't. That's a lie too big even for the last night of their lives.

“Don't do anything stupid. Survive. And I'll follow you anywhere.”

Maybe she knows. Maybe she knows Maria could never ask that of her. Maybe it's dark enough and quiet enough, that she could say it here.

Just once.

She could tell her how much she loves her, how much her life was changed because Natasha was there by her side, how much braver she feels when she's there, or how much harder it's getting to pretend like they don't mean anything to each other lately.

Maria could tell her how there once was a little girl, who ran away from home, because she felt like she had no other choice. A little girl who knew nothing about being loved and too much about loving, so she had to unlearn it to survive. A little girl who never had a choice but to leave any place that she was starting to call home.

How she's all grown up now and still doesn't get the luxury of choosing. She has to leave again. And this time, the thing that scares her isn't leaving; she's bringing home with her. It's losing it some other way that can never be undone.

She opens her mouth and is sure some of that is about to come out of it, when Natasha turns to the nightstand for a moment, and a second later the speakers are playing their song.

And maybe, maybe, Natasha knows.

  
  


When they leave, in the morning, Maria's wearing that old hoodie that Natasha still looks at with narrowed eyes. Natasha takes her hand. Fearlessly, unapologetically, in front of all their friends. Their cover's up. They're just themselves now, they can't be anybody else any longer.

 


	5. Some things are meant to be

Madam's HYDRA's office is on the top floor of the central HYDRA building, just across the city of New York. An impenetrable fortress designed to withstand any and all attacks. And at the top of it, her office. The unreachable woman. Even if someone tried to break in, she would flee before they could even reach the second floor.

And from there, she rules, unopposed and unafraid.

As someone walks in, she barely rises her eyes from the screen she's looking at, so engrossed in it and so sure nobody she doesn't trust could ever get past her security systems.

“Madam HYDRA,” a voice distracts her from the task at hand.

“Agent Ward, you're back I see.”

She gets up and walks around the desk, leaning on it, waiting for him to get closer. He does so, slowly, cautiously.

“Have you checked out the rumors? Is Stark Industries back in line?”

“It is. In fact, I don't believe it was ever out. We did an inspection, everything's as it should, and Mr Stark is too lost in his assistant to care about a war he doesn't stand a chance to win.”

She smiles, beckoning him closer. “Good job, Grant. And you're sure it's nothing we should be worried about?”

He walks to her, stopping three feet away just to walk closer a moment later, taking the last two steps that bring him toes to toes with her. His hands raise and he moves Aida's hair away from her face, smiling softly down at her.

“I'm sure. There is only one thing that could make our hold on the nation crumble, as things are right now, and it's nothing happening inside Stark Industries.”

She frowns, perplexed he thinks something _could_ relinquish their hold on the people.

“What could that possibly be? We're invincible. Cut one head off, two more will grow.”

“Yes,” he nods. “That's true for every state, I suppose. Yet, there's only one thing that never fails to start or end wars.”

He frames her face with his hands, then slowly caresses her cheeks.

“The death of a leader.”

His wrists push up against her throat and the electric chips hidden on his cuffs come in contact with the skin of her neck, as all their power surges through her body.

Once she stops breathing and her body drops, Maria alerts Steve through her comms that it's time to siege the building: their leader can't escape anymore.

  
  


Maria remembers Tony proposing it, when they were deciding what to do with Madam's HYDRA's right arm, when he went to investigate them and found himself knees deep into the rebellion's heart. They couldn't let him go back, but they could make his death mean something.

So Maria volunteered. She was the one who built the veil, she was the one who built the untraceable electric chips, she was the one who had to do this.

She puts on Grant Ward's face feeling mildly disgusted with herself, but their plan works like a charm. Even HYDRA needs time to regrow an head that's gone so suddenly. She slips in untraced, kills her quickly. They take the building in a day, New York in two weeks.

Suddenly, people are marching in the streets, taking their cities back. They keep moving, keep organizing, keep traveling to the places HYDRA is still going strong, taking back city after city, with their un-killable super-soldiers doing the bulk of the heavy lifting – both literal and metaphorical.

Bucky looks, everyday, more and more like the boy Maria used to know. He's regaining some memories, and sometimes, when he smiles, Maria almost feels like she could have him back. Steve looks everyday less and less like himself. First the serum, then the war, the only thing that brings him back to the surface is Sharon. Sometimes his friends, too.

They all change, for better or for worse. They were kids so little ago, but sometimes it feels like they've never been kids at all.

  
  


It takes a lot longer than what they thought, a hell of a lot longer than what they had hoped for, for even a semblance of normalcy to be back into their lives.

The war, it takes things from them, people. Not everyone makes it in one piece. Not everyone makes it at all.

Until, one day, impossibly, it is over.

There's a moment when Maria knows.

When she's standing on a street in D.C. and it's so cold that she can see her own breath in the air in front of her, there's snow falling down from the sky and the cold is so deep that it freezes her very bones. She closes her eyes and breaths in deeply, as deep as the air would reach, and she feels it there, in the coldness at the bottom of her lungs, that it's over.

That she can stop running from the things she wants to belong to or the thing that she wants to belong to her. She's not that little girl anymore, the girl running away from home.

She knows it somewhere between her split up lips and her frozen fingertips, somewhere midway there, at the center of her heart, she knows she's not running from home anymore. Instead, she's running towards it from now on.

  
  


The day the last HYDRA cell falls, it's the day they say their goodbyes. Not forever, they like to tell each other, but until things are settled enough.

Tony and Pepper stay and NYC, so they can reorganize the democratic system and all its bureaucracy. Steve and Sharon go to Florida, Sam takes Washington and Bucky asks for something quiet and peaceful, so they send him to Montana. Phil takes Vegas, and asks for May to help cover the rest of Nevada. Two of Fury's kids – Fitz and Simmons – are sent do California. Barton, the man who used to sit outside Tony's office and act like his secretary when he was actually his bodyguard, turns out to be properly trained, and is sent to Kansas because that's where his family is apparently. There are a lot of other people they need to entrust with the rebuilding, but there's no other choice. Fury will travel around and check on everything as best as he can.

Maria and Natasha take Illinois. Chicago, more precisely, and decide to go back and see what's left of The Shield.

The place is still there, a little worse for wear but still holding itself up. The bar has still almost all its furniture. The house is almost as they left it. And Maria's car is still in the garage under a sheet she finally gets to lift again.

She gets behind the wheel and closes her eyes. It's been over a year, but it feels like a lifetime ago since the day she left it there without knowing if she'd ever get to drive it again.

Now that she can, now that she's actually sitting inside it, she can't even fathom where she'd go with it. Freedom feels like a foreign concept, the car isn't a symbol of her being able to do whatever she wants to and go whatever she wishes anymore. The car it's just there to remind her of a time when the concept of freedom was smaller to her.

She loved it so much. She hopes, someday, she can appreciate it and love it again just as she did before.

  
  


The bar is pretty much the same. The bottles are gone, and so are a few chairs, but the tables, the shelves, the counter, are just like she remembers them. They work on fixing it up in the morning, Natasha takes care of the bureaucracy in the afternoon while Maria sets up her lab in the basement just the way it was before.

In two weeks, they're ready to open up again.

The bar opens back on a Friday, Natasha stocks it full and on opening night she bartends. Maria caters. She hasn't done it since she was sixteen and Fury broke a man's hand because he groped her. This time around, nobody even glances at her the wrong way. Maybe they're intimidated, maybe they're too busy ogling Natasha. It makes her feel uneasy, and it makes her feel like she's Fury this time around, expect she wouldn't really know how to go about breaking a man's hand with a baseball bat.

They get the word around, everyone recognizes her on the streets and says hi in passing so Maria talks to people, connects with them in a way she hasn't done since she's worked there before.

People start asking about the other side of the job again.

Maria is making holowatches and wristphones, she doesn't know for whom yet, but she tries to work at least one hour a day on those.

“You know,” Natasha is the one who has the idea, “it's not illegal anymore. We could sell them, one or two days a week, in the park. Lowest price we can afford to sell them for, we could have a system to make sure nobody is scamming us.”

“Such as?”

“Let me think about that software stuff, you keep working on the hardware.”

Maria shrugs and nods. And frowns after a moment, when she realizes she would trust Natasha with anything at this point.

The system is simple: they record the prints when they assign the holo's or the w-phones, so nobody gets more than one. Natasha has a program, her own designing, on her w-phone that lets her do it quickly and efficiently.

That Monday that they walk to the park and wait around, trying to see if someone needs them. They spend twenty minutes just standing there, sure nobody will need them after all. When people realize it's her, they start asking if she's selling tech again, if their friend who's without a holo can get one, if she's doing w-phones.

They sell a few, just a couple of watches and one phone, but it's still something. It just covers the expenses after all, they don't really need much money. The _bar_ , if they don't run it like Nick did, it's what's supposed to make them money.

The house is fine, too. The furniture is still there, but all the clothes and groceries and luxuries are gone, of course. They redecorate a little, they take Fury's room, just because it's the biggest, and fill the closet with their clothes and never really talk about it. Their stuff fits together, and so do they.

They fix what's broken and Maria takes the office downstairs, behind the bar, leaving Fury's old office for Natasha, so she can do what she wants with it.

Slowly, the house starts looking like a home again, starts feeling like a home again.

There's a part of Maria that sometimes wonder if when everything's settled there Natasha will leave to go sort out some other place, some other city in some other State. She doesn't let herself wonder too much.

  
  


They go back to the park the Monday after the first one, thinking they'll maybe have a couple more costumers, but when they get there there's a line forming of people waiting to talk to them. Maria recognizes a few: Mr K, Vicky from the pub, a friend of Phil she was never tight with.

She sighs, then turns to Natasha. “This is gonna take us all day.”

“Better hurry up then,” she smirks, starting to introduce herself to the first girl in line.

Natasha takes the order and fingerprints and Maria explains how everything works, giving the same speech she feels like she's been giving her whole life. It does take them the better part of the day, but they get to the end of the queue. They're almost out of everything Maria has build in three weeks, and some people asked for stuff they didn't have – some of them need screens for their stores and some needs GPS for their cars.

Maria says she'll do her best to see what she can do, and she tries to prioritize. Screens come before anything, because stores would close without them and people would be out of their jobs. She needs to make them before someone checks, but since there's not even a proper government at the moment, she's not too scared about that.

Even with the parts coming from NYC almost every other day, keeping up is hard. And Natasha ends up taking the bulk of the bartending work. It's not ideal, at all.

“I kinda like it,” Natasha tells her. “It relaxes me, it's a different kind of chaos.”

Maria wishes she could help her anyway, but if she's going to make three store screens in a week, she needs every minute she can get. She ends up catering in the evening, when the place is more packed. Natasha is a natural, her tips are stellar, and Maria has learned to keep Nick's bat around. She hasn't used it yet, but a couple of times she's felt her fingers itch for it. She's never been into violence but the way men look at Natasha makes something between her sternum and her belly button catch fire.

It quells, at night. Because she's the one Natasha's sleeping next to.

  
  


It's their sixth Monday in the park, it's just a man like any other, asking for a holo, but something in his voice makes Maria look up while Natasha is still taking his print.

He stares at her and Maria stares back. She's all grown up now, she's been a criminal and she's been a soldier, she's been everything in between and she's fought in a war. And still, when the man gives her the hint of a smile, there's dread in the pit of her stomach.

“Hey, kid. You look well.”

Maria looks down at the holowatch in her hands, wrapping it around the man's wrist, making sure it's locked and he's pressed his right thumb on it. She does so without grazing his hands, just holding his forearm steady while he pushes on the screen. When she lets go, her eyes don't rise, she looks at the next watch, already in her hands.

“The weather app shows you when there's going to be a green rain. If you need somewhere safe to sleep there's an app-”

“I'm still at the old place,” he tells her like it's supposed to mean something.

“Good for you. Next one.”

He hesitates, shoves his hands in his pockets. “Is that all you have to say to me, kid?”

Maria looks up. She'd like to tell him she's not his kid. She'd like to tell him there's only one man who calls her that, she wants to tell him the same thing she's told anyone who's ever asked: she's Fury's kid.

“Is there a problem?” Natasha asks, already dealing with the next person in line.

“No. No, no problem,” he says when Maria doesn't take her eyes off of him.

When he leaves, his shadow stays, and it takes up a large part of Maria's mind for the rest of the week.

  
  


“So who was he?”

“Nobody.”

Judging by the way Natasha looks at her when she says that, it was the wrong thing to say.

“You've been upset all week and-”

“Nat, it was nobody.”

Natasha bites back the end of her sentence and when she smiles, Maria can see it's the same smile she used to give to Tony when he was about to have his ass handed to him. But Natasha doesn't yell. She just walks away and goes back behind the counter.

That night, when a girl hits on Maria, she throws a casual “I'm with someone” her way before loading her tray and walking to the table she's serving. Natasha doesn't flinch, doesn't say anything, but once the bar is closed and Maria is too tired to contemplate a fight, that's when Natasha decides it's a great time to have their very first one.

“So you're with someone?”

Her arms are crossed and she looks pretty crossed too. Maria immediately wishes she could have a do over of the entire day.

“Aren't I?”

“What, you're into labels now? You don't want to _be_ with someone. You don't want to share your thoughts or your life with someone, you've made it pretty clear.”

“I-” Maria frowns, “I don't know what that means.”

Natasha scoffs. “We shared every plan you thought of, every project you worked on, everything I did while I was out there. It was like, the more things got fucked up the closer we got. I thought it meant something, but since we've been here-” she sighs, shrugging. “You won't drive your car and you keep brushing me off when I mention it, you won't tell me who that man was, or why you won't even open your old room or Fury's home office. You're disappearing on me, and I don't get why, Maria.”

She wishes she had an answer she could give to Natasha. Instead, her head is filled with things she's too scared to say.

“If this was just a temporary thing for you, I'd rather k-”

“Isn't it? For you? I mean, aren't you leaving me at some point?”

“ _What_?”

Maria thinks hard of a way to rephrase that, so it doesn't sound so awful. “Your job's in New York. Your whole life-”

“You think a job could ever matter to me as much as you do? I moved here, didn't I? I told you to survive, I told you I'd follow you anywhere.”

“I thought you were just scared to lose me. Why would you settle for someone like me? You could have the w- you _deserve_ the world. I can't give you anything worth staying for.”

Natasha frowns at that, because, doesn't Maria know? Doesn't she know what she means to Natasha? They've never said it, sure, but Natasha has a pretty good idea of what she means to Maria.

“I'm not staying because I want something from you. And it's not your job to make me stay. I came here, I'll stay here as long as you want me to, because I love you, Maria. Don't you know how I feel about you?”

There's something that gets trapped behind her teeth, something she's been chocking back so long it feels harder to let it out than to hold it back. But if there was ever a moment, now would be it.

“My mom died giving birth to me and I guess my father never really forgave me. He – you know, the man from the park, the one who called me _kid_ – well, when I was actually a kid he used to beat me up. I always thought it was my fault, that I wasn't special enough or good enough, and he would've cared about me if I was just... better. I ran away when I was thirteen, Nick found me living in his streets. He brought me in even if he didn't have to and I tried my best to make him proud. I used to piss him off so much, but he never loved me less; he had one rule about not having guns around and when I broke it he sent me to NYC and I couldn't say anything to make him change his mind. I'm not special. I love you, Nat, but I know there are a lot of things about me that piss you off and I know one of them will be the thing that drives you away.”

“Nothing about you pisses me off,” Natasha tells her, eyes shining with tears that Maria isn't sure are for her own pain. “I mean, of course you annoy me sometimes, but none of it would ever make me leave you. Nothing you could ever do would ever make me leave you. What happened with your father is awful, terrible, but Nick didn't send you away because he was mad, Maria. He sent you to us because he knew you could win us this war. _And he was right_.”

She walks to Maria, taking her hands in her own.

“You're so, so special. You are. But that's not why I fell in love with you. You're stubborn and you don't give a shit what others think about you and you're so fucking smart. And Fury knows, he loves you, you're his daughter. And I love you. And you'll have to learn to share your fears and your feelings with me, if we're gonna make this work.”

“Sharing feelings sucks. But it's not so bad if it's with you.”

Natasha chuckles at that.

“I'll be better at communicating. I promise. And you'll stay?”

“Masha, when I told you I'd follow you anywhere, I didn't mean I'd go with you just to leave you there. Of course, I'll stay.”

Maria doesn't know why, since every other person in her life who's promised her that hasn't, but when Natasha promises, she believes her.

  
  


The weeks turn into months and the boys move back into the city; Steve and Sharon share an apartment a block away, Sam gets back his parents old place down the street and shares it with Bucky – temporarily, they tell everyone, until James finds something else. It's been temporary for a long time, now, whatever's going on between the two of them.

Just a couple of days after Sharon and Steve moved back, they go over to find Maria and Natasha working on the Honda Accord.

“Oh, my God,” Sharon chuckled, circling it and looking at it. “I can't believe you still have this, you're an adult, buy a new car!”

“Why? I love my car. And I just repainted it, as red as it was back in the day.”

Sharon chuckles again, ducking to look at the seats, her eyes lingering in the back.

“Yeah. It looks just like it did.”

“So you two knew each other,” Steve smiles. “I knew you'd been in Chicago but I didn't know you knew Maria.”

“Yeah, I spent 2061's summer here.”

Natasha looks at her in a funny way, but Maria distracts them with the promise of food and she hopes it'll never come out again.

Life, as always, isn't that merciful.

“Is that why you didn't want to drive the car? Reminded you of an ex?” Natasha asks once they're back home.

“No. It reminded me of a time when I thought freedom meant being able to get away from Nick fast enough. Now everything's messy and complicated and I'm not sure anyone's really free in this world.”

“Mh. And what made you change your mind?”

She shrugs. “I like driving and having a car is practical. Not everything I own or do can be the purpose of my life.”

Natasha hums again, then shrugs and drops the topic. The Honda breaks down ten days later and Maria realizes forty-five years old cars probably shouldn't be in the streets anyway. They buy a new one, and call it their car. There's a point when Maria stops wondering how long Natasha will stay and starts planning on the assumption she'll just _stay_.

  
  


Someone has been stealing from them. Well, not _them_ , but from their people. They know because some of the people they remember giving holowatches too are now without them and are very skittish about it when they ask around.

One night, Maria's running late after a commission, she sees Mr K walking down the street and slows her car down. It's almost eight, any minute now the rain will start.

“Get in,” she yells, gesturing for him to hurry up. “Get in the car, don't you know it's about to rain?!”

She drives them to her own bar, parks the car in the garage so they won't have to walk outside. The last mile is a nightmare, Maria hasn't been out in a green night in a while and the sky looks better but the rain is as damaging as ever. Her new car, thankfully, is made to withstand it. If she still had the old Honda they would have been in trouble, but they make it fine.

Natasha sees her walk in with a pretty shaken man and makes them hot tea.

“Was wondering where you were, got scared for a moment that you were still out.”

Maria's eyes go to the man sitting beside her, drinking tea slowly.

“Frank,” she says softly, “how long have you known me? Don't you know you can trust me? Someone will have to tell me what's going on or I'm not gonna be able to fix it.”

He shakes his head, then sighs. “I'm an old man, if tonight had been someone younger... just stop him. Just stop him if you can.”

He gives them a name and a place: John Garrett who likes to hang around Vicky's club. He's been stealing watches and phones off of people and trying to sell them back to the owners, when that didn't work he tried formatting them so they'll have no fingerprints to sell them to someone else. It turned out, nobody wants to buy from anyone else but Hill.

Loyalty is an endearing thing, if it's to her or to Fury, Maria isn't sure. But she knows what she has to do.

Steve, Sam, James and Sharon are outside the bar the night she gets word of Garrett being at the Hand's bar. She wears the old hoodie she hasn't found the strength to get rid of, and Natasha still eyes it weirdly.

They all go, not because Maria needs them for this, but for the same reason they do everything they do: it's a statement. It's not one person beating up another in an alley, it's public and crowded, just like the settings Fury used to prefer when he had to send his messages. She's sure almost everyone above the age of fifteen remembers him and what he's done.

It's the only thing she can do, be this cold, be this heartless. It's the only path she can take but it doesn't make her hate it any less. It's a part of this job she's never liked. But it's a part of it, and it has to be done.

When they walk in, he's sitting at the counter, laughing with a few of his buddies. Maria makes a beeline for him and makes him turn by grabbing his shoulder, punching him square on the jaw and then pressing his face down on the counter before he can react, her forearm pressing into the back of his neck.

The music stops and the lights are on a second later, the man at the console looking at Victoria, behind the counter, waiting for instructions. She walks to them and whispers hastily for Maria to let him go. She does, pushing him back into his friends, and staring him down.

“You've been stealing from my people,” it's not a question, and she's almost surprised about how naturally the words _my people_ come out of her mouth. She supposes they are, now that Fury's not there anymore. “One of them almost got caught in the rain the other night. Where are the holo's, Garrett?”

He gives her a coy, disturbing smile and says nothing.

Maria isn't happy with it, but she was always gonna have to do it anyway. “I'm guessing you remember Nick Fury,” she turns her head, looking at his friends, then at all the other people in the club. “He had a life philosophy about this kind of things that he passed down to me and I cherished it dearly. He knew that, sometimes, you have to send people a message in a way you might not like, and you ought to do it once. If you have to send the same message twice you weren’t clear the first time,” she takes out of her pocket a small controller, that would look like a car key to most. “So let me be perfectly clear,” she presses one of the buttons, and doesn't do so with a light heart.

Garrett has barely the time to bring a hand to the back of his neck before e drops down on his knees, the chip Maria planted there sending shocks through his body.

“You don't steal from my people, you don't mess with my people. And by my people, I mean every person in this city, in this _State_. I'm sure word of this will get around. When it does, don't forget to mention the next guy won't have the luck of me setting the chip's power at one third its maximum.”

Garrett falls on his stomach once the pain subsides, breathing hard. Maria looks up at one of his companions, raising one eyebrow.

“Did I make myself clear enough?”

He takes a step toward her and Natasha takes a step toward him. Everyone knows who she is, even in Chicago. Maria might have thought up the majority of their tech, but Natasha was the one who used it. Everyone knew the codenames of the four super soldiers who won them the war: Captain America, the Winter Soldier, Falcon and Black Widow.

“Crystal clear,” one of the others say. “The holo's are in the trunk of his car, nobody would buy them back if it wasn't from you. We tried formatting them, but we couldn't hack them.”

Maria steps aside and gestures to the door with her hand. “So show us his car, then.”

He walks ahead of them and they're almost at the door, they're almost out of there when Garrett gets back on his feet.

“You cut off our head, but two other will grow back, eventually. HYDRA will never die.”

A cold shiver runs down Maria's spine. That's the moment she realizes, the war isn't over. It won't ever be over as long as people like him are around. She doesn't really have a choice: he said the words and there's only one thing she can do, so she dials the number on her wristphone, the police chief's head appears out of her wrist a moment later. She knows what will happen next, but she has no choice. She'll tell herself in the days to come, she had no choice. She's not sure she ever believes it.

“I'm sending you six pictures of HYDRA members we found at Vicky Hand's club, can you send someone down to arrest them? We'll hold them here until you arrive.”

“We'll be there in ten.”

When three of them extract their guns, it takes Steve and Natasha all of thirty seconds to disarm them. Ten minutes later, after they tried to escape for nine minutes and forty-five seconds, four of the six men drop down after swallowing the capsules in their teeth at the cry of “Hail HYDRA”, just like they knew they would. The other two claim to have had no idea they were HYDRA. It won't matter: they associated with them, they will spend the foreseeable future in a cell.

They recover the holowatches and give them back to the rightful owners. It still feels like a loss anyway.

Garrett's dead but she sees him in her dreams that night, foam coming out of his mouth and Victoria Hand crying in the back. She wakes up in a cold sweat and suddenly she's sure he's the man she saw her making out with outside the club all those years ago, when Sam yelled at them to go get a room. He died in front of her. He was HYDRA. Is there no one you can trust in this world? Is nothing sacred anymore?

There are arms around her waist a moment later and she's back in her present again, with Natasha whispering soft reassurances and bringing her back from a nightmare that Maria doesn't dare to tell her it's not her usual one, the one where she kills Aida.

She wonders if she'll ever be free of this. If this war will ever truly end, or if it'll just be another kind of fight from now on.

“Maybe if I didn't call the police...”

“They were HYDRA, Maria. You couldn't just let them walk away.”

No, she supposes she couldn't. She supposes none of them really ever had a choice. Maria's leaders tell her to report every HYDRA agent, and HYDRA's leaders tell them to kill themselves before being captured. So, really, this is the way things were always going to end up.

“You remember what it was like, don't you? They're evil, Masha. Every last one of them. You can't get behind that ideology unless you are.”

Maria nods and knows it's true. It doesn't make the things they've done easier to live with. Or they wouldn't have so many nightmares they have to calm each other down from. But it is true, and Maria clings to the knowledge like a lifeline.

  
  


It takes a while, but life gets easier. It gets happier, lighter, almost fair.

The day comes when they don't have to head out every Monday, but people come to them every once in a while with some extraordinary maintenance request. Stark has been working on clearing the air and the seas and the day come they announce there won't be any green rain anymore.

They get an invitation to a service and it's not for a funeral but for a wedding.

They sell the bar – why keep it out of tradition if it doesn't make them happy? They don't need a front anymore, they're doing nothing illegal now – and buy a home, they start a tech company named “The Shield” instead, Maria does hardware and Natasha does software and all the lost tech is put back on the market eventually, then they start to invent new merchandising. It turns out, they're quite good at it.

Maria still isn't used to the sound of her own laugh, but she hears it more and more everyday. Natasha seems to love it, she always starts laughing when she hears Maria laugh, but she gets it because Maria does the same, and in time it becomes clear that they make each other actually, genuinely happy. It's crazy to think about.

One day, it's October and Natasha says she's cold, she puts on Maria's old hoodie and never gives it back again. She almost always has it on. Maria thinks, perhaps, that's why she was always eyeing it, biding her time until she could get her hands on it. It's okay, because Maria's hoodie actually looks better on Natasha in her opinion, and maybe she was always meant to be the one to have it, and Maria was just keeping it safe for her.

Maybe her old hoodie is the thing Maria can give her that is special enough to make her stay, because the hoodie has seen it all; everything she is, everything she's been through, the hoodie is soaked in it. If Natasha always has it with her, she always has Maria with her.

_That's_ the one thing Maria can give her that feels special enough. All of herself, everything she was, everything she'll be eventually.

Whatever she's meant to be, whatever things she's meant to do, the one thing she's sure about is that Natasha is meant to be there by her side.

  
  


It's the Autumn of 2071, they start hearing about some kid roaming the streets in what people still call their part of town to their faces. Like they saved it. Like they saved the people in it. Maria thinks the city saved itself, they all did what they could to survive.

But people come to her because this kid has been stealing food and other things and if they tell Sam or Steve, they'll have to arrest the child. It's not conceivable, the thought of a kid in a cell, so Maria and Natasha go looking for her.

They find her in a deserted alley in the East, not far from where Fury found her. She's ten or twelve, they're not sure exactly, but still, she's too young to be out there alone.

“So you're the kid who's been stealing food around this part of the city,” Maria walks to her slowly, trying not to spook her. “How'd you end up here?”

The kid stares at them for a long time, Maria isn't sure she'll ever answer, then she shrugs and looks at her feet.

“How old are you?”

“Ten. I ran away.”

Maria doesn't think asking from whom or what would get her a better answer until this kid trusts them, so she decides she doesn't care. Whatever has made a child live in the streets for weeks it's awful enough, she doesn't have to make her talk about it with a stranger.

“What's your name, kid?”

“Ava.”

“That's a beautiful name, Ava. I'm Maria, this is Natasha.”

Maria offers the girl her hand and her heart. People start calling her Maria's kid or Natasha's kid, depending on the kind of mischief she's gotten into that time.

Eventually, when she thinks about freedom and happiness and everything else she was never able to understand, she feels like she finally gets it.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the end of the story, I've enjoyed writing this AU so much, the universe and setting was very refreshing to write as it's unlike anything I've ever written before, so I'd like to know what you thought about it. Thank you all so much for reading!


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